Hartford HealthCare’s endowment fund has pitched in on a $71.5-million investment in a California biotech developing treatments for solid tumor cancers.
A2 Biotherapeutics, located in the Los Angeles County city of Agoura Hills, represents at least the third California biotech investment HHC’s endowment has announced since 2019.
Others include antibody developer Surrozen and clinical-stage oncology company ORIC Pharmaceuticals, both based in San Francisco. ORIC went public earlier this year, raising $120 million, according to Xconomy.
The exact amount of HHC’s investment in A2’s Series B round was not disclosed. The endowment fund invested alongside a mix of seven others, including venture capital funds and investment firms such as The Column Group, Samsara BioCapital and Nextech Invest. The University of California’s investment office also participated.
A2 said the money will help it advance its “T-cell module” platform and the clinical development and in-house manufacturing of three near-term product candidates.
A2 says the T cells it has engineered kill tumor cells while protecting normal cells from harm.
“We are the first company to create robust engineered T cells that can integrate two signals in this way, harnessing the awesome power of immune cells to attack tumors that have lost specific genes, while sparing normal cells whose genomes are intact,“ Scott Foraker, A2’s president and CEO, said in a statement.
