ARTICLE | Emerging Company Profile
Off-the-shelf cell therapy pioneers, Versant launch Matterhorn to tackle broad range of cancers
Start-up’s MR1T cell therapy designed to address broader range of cancers than CAR T, TCR therapies
August 6, 2020 3:03 AM UTC
Versant’s Ridgeline incubator in Basel has launched Matterhorn with an off-the-shelf MR1T cell therapy designed to address a broader range of cancers than CAR T and TCR therapies. The company raised a $30 million series A round on Wednesday to take its first program into the clinic.
Matterhorn Biosciences AG licensed IP covering the use of MR1-restricted T cells in cancer immunotherapy from CSO Lucia Mori and fellow co-founder Gennaro De Libero, a professor of immunology at the University of Basel. They first proposed the role of MR1 in cancer immune surveillance in 2016 and described MR1T cells in a 2017 eLife article. ...