Tessa Therapeutics, a Temasek-backed clinical stage biotech company, is set to enter liquidation after failing to raise more funding for the development of its cancer treatment cell therapies or find a strategic buyer amid a market downturn, The Business Times reported citing the company’s letter to shareholders.
Founded in 2012 by Dr Marlcom Brenner, Andrew Khoo, and Francis Chua, Tessa Therapeutics was among the top-funded biotech startups in Singapore. It raised $126 million in a Series A funding round led by US-based healthcare and technology investor Polaris Partners in June last year.
Earlier, Tessa raised $50 million from undisclosed investors in 2018 and $80 million led by Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings, EDBI, Karst Peak Capital, Heliconia Capital Management, Heritas, and other investors in 2017.
Tessa was advancing the ongoing clinical development of its autologous CD30-CAR-T therapy (TT11) and allogeneic CD30.CAR EBVST therapy (TT11X) programmes.
TT11 is an autologous CD30 chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy that harvests the patient’s own T-cells and modifies them to target cancer cells expressing the CD30 protein, a well-validated lymphoma target.
TT11X, on the other hand, was based on Tessa’s proprietary allogeneic CD30.CAR EBVST platform. The platform overcomes toxicity challenges common to “off-the-shelf” cell therapies such as Graft vs Host Disease (GVHD) by using allogeneic Virus specific T-cells (VSTs) augmented with CD30-CAR.
In 2019, Tessa had formed a $120-million joint venture with China-Singapore Guangzhou Knowledge City (CSGKC) to conduct clinical trials for its cell therapies in China, which target cancers for patients with hematological malignancies and solid tumors.
