Carina Biotech is extremely pleased to announce that it has raised $7.5 million at first close of its current funding round, welcoming on board new venture capital business Tenmile as the cornerstone investor together with strong support from existing investors.

“We are delighted to welcome Tenmile as an investor in Carina Biotech with its commitment to accelerate high impact, cutting edge Australian health technology innovation. We are also pleased that our other shareholders have continued their strong support,” said CEO Dr Deborah Rathjen.

The capital raise enables Carina to complete its Investigational New Drug (IND) enabling studies and initiate a CAR-T clinical trial of our LGR5 CAR-T cell for patients with advanced colorectal (bowel) cancer.

“Colorectal cancer is Australia’s second deadliest cancer and its incidence is rising in people under the age of 50. Many younger people are diagnosed at advanced stages of the disease with very poor prognoses. This is a lethal cancer for all Australians, young and old, that we want to be able to treat. CAR-T therapy is currently used for the treatment of blood cancers and it has proved to be curative.

“We are very excited to be able to bring this personalised form of immunotherapy embedded with Carina’s proprietary CAR-T technology to patients with solid cancers,” Dr Rathjen further added.

Tenmile Executive Chair, Dr Steve Burnell, said, “Carina represents the kind of investment opportunity Tenmile looks for – advanced novel technology addressing a major unmet medical need, depth of expertise, global networks and strong intellectual property. It also reflects our commitment to using our capital as a force
for good including backing female-led businesses.”

Carina is one of Tenmile’s first cohort of investments. Tenmile is the new $250m healthtech venture capital fund backed by Andrew and Nicola Forrest’s Tattarang investment group.

The capital raise also enables Carina to progress its robust pipeline of CAR-T programs and its technology platform which includes Carina’s Chemokine Receptor Platform that is being used to develop CAR-T cells expressing chemokine receptors that drive CAR-T cells to ‘home in’ on specific cancer cells.

Carina’s proprietary manufacturing process shortens the time required for CAR-T cell generation producing higher numbers of highly active CAR-T cells.

Carina’s approach to institutional and impact investors was undertaken by MST Financial. Peter Wilson of wilsonemmett Pty Ltd acted as financial adviser to Carina.

Click here to read more.

#investment #immunooncology #clinicaltrials #cancerresearch#curecancerfaster #collaboratetoinnovate