A company developing an off-the-shelf immunotherapy that it thinks can turn tumors into adjuvant-secreting machines has some fresh capital as it heads into phase 2 clinical trials.
Twenty investors have put $5 million behind Heat Biologics, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing. CEO Jeff Wolf was not available to provide more details on the funding for this story.
Heat’s lead product is an engineered version of a naturally occurring heat-shock protein that the company says both stimulates the cancer cell-killing arm of the immune system and acts as an antigen-delivery system. Research has established that heat-shock proteins play a role in tissue and cell protection when the body is under stress, and they’ve been studied as potential targets in treating neurodegeneration, cardiovascular disease and cancer.
Unlike other immunotherapies that use a patient’s own cells or blood, Heat’s technology, ImPACT, is designed to be an off-the-shelf product. Currently, Heat is recruiting patients for a phase 2 study in late-stage, non-small cell lung cancer patients. Clinical trials in bladder cancer are expected to begin this year as well.
Wolf has said that down the road, the technology also has applications in viral diseases.
Heat was spun out of the University of Miami in 2008 and moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 2011.
