The burgeoning cancer immunotherapy space has tons of investors, to be sure, but perhaps no other startup has ever been as well-capitalized as Seattle-based Juno Therapeutics.
The company now has raised $310 million in the past year, having just closed a $134 million Series B round that comes right on the heels of its $176 million Series A this April.
This B round has 10 investors in the mix, including new investments from several public mutual funds, though they are opting to remain anonymous, the company said.
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“What I can tell you,” CEO Hans Bishop said in a phone interview, “is that the funds invested in this round are some of the highest quality healthcare investors in the country.”
When funding comes from large public funds, or “super-investors” as Bishop called them, it opens up the option to go public.
“It gives the company optionality,” Bishop said. “If it turns out the right thing to do is stay private, we’ve got the right investor base – but if the right thing is IPO, we have investors who could help that along as well.
All previous investors also participated. Investors in the A round include Bezos Expeditions, the personal investment company of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Venrock, among others.
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The company is developing two immunotherapy platforms to treat hematologic and solid tumor cancers and reduce the toxicity associated with chemotherapeutics. The company plans to use the proceeds to continue advancing its chimeric antigen receptor and T-cell receptor pipeline, it said in a statement. Its CAR T-cell therapies directed against B-lymphocyte antigen CD19 is currently in phase 1/2 trials.
Juno Therapeutics was launched in December 2013, co-founded with financial support from ARCH Venture Partners and the Alaska Permanent fund through a partnership managed by Crestline investors.
