Rondo Therapeutics rounds up $67 million for cancer treatments

While Rondo intends to create drugs that are effective on their own, it also will consider opportunities to combine its treatments with other cancer drugs to mount an even more effective attack, said Jon Edwards, a managing director with Red Tree.Premium
While Rondo intends to create drugs that are effective on their own, it also will consider opportunities to combine its treatments with other cancer drugs to mount an even more effective attack, said Jon Edwards, a managing director with Red Tree.
 wsj 2 min read . Updated: 02 Mar 2022, 08:11 PM IST The Wall Street Journal

Venture capitalists have invested $67 million in Rondo Therapeutics Inc., a cancer drug developer led by entrepreneurs who previously helped start successful biotechnology company Teneobio Inc.

Investors are betting their new company can develop effective immunotherapies for common solid-tumor cancers that have proven to be difficult to treat.

Canaan Partners and Red Tree Venture Capital led this financing for Rondo, a Hayward, Calif.-based startup co-founded by Shelley Force Aldred, the company’s chief executive, and Nathan Trinklein, its chief scientific officer. They previously helped start Teneobio, which drugmaker Amgen Inc. acquired in October for $900 million cash and $1.6 billion in success-based payments.

Teneobio’s portfolio included a platform for creating drugs known as T-cell engagers, which bind both to tumor cells and to T cells of the immune system. This physically links them and turns on the T cell, according to Dr. Trinklein.

Current T-cell engagers include Amgen’s Blincyto, which won U.S. regulatory approval in 2014 and treats certain patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a cancer of the blood and bone marrow.

Rondo is developing T-cell engagers that could treat solid tumors, such as breast or ovarian cancer. Solid tumors repel the immune system more robustly than blood cancers, drawing in cells that suppress immune responses, according to Dr. Trinklein. To treat solid tumors effectively, T-cell engagers must be potent enough to overcome this immune suppression, but not so powerful that they cause intolerable side effects.

“You want it to be strong enough, but not too strong," Dr. Aldred said. “That takes a lot of experience to get right."

Drawing on their previous experience, Drs. Aldred and Trinklein aim to devise T-cell engagers that strike this balance. Rondo seeks to engineer T-cell engagers with specific capabilities, such as the ability to stimulate a sustained T-cell response that can beat back solid tumors, or spark a broader immune-system assault on the cancer, according to Dr. Trinklein.

While Rondo intends to create drugs that are effective on their own, it also will consider opportunities to combine its treatments with other cancer drugs to mount an even more effective attack, said Jon Edwards, a managing director with Red Tree.

Nina Kjellson, a general partner with Canaan, said solid tumors present challenges but added that progress in areas such a tumor biology, tumor targets and understanding of the immune system are exciting and could lead to new, highly effective treatments.

Rondo plans to use this first or Series A round of funding to build its pipeline and progress at least one drug into clinical trials, Dr. Aldred said.

Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC Inc., Novo Holdings A/S and SV Health Investors also joined this financing.

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This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text

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