GC Therapeutics’ plug-and-play stem cell programming platform aims to reduce cell therapy development time by up to 100 times.
Cell therapy startup GC Therapeutics (GCTx) has emerged from the lab of renowned geneticist George Church, securing a $65 million Series A funding round that brings the total raised by the company to a cool $75 million. The company is on a mission to enable the next generation of cell therapies through its proprietary “TFome” platform, which GCTx claims is the first “plug-and-play” induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) cellular programming platform.
Developed by a team of scientists in Professor Church’s lab of at Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute, TFome aims to help streamline the complex, error-prone and costly process of cell therapy development by accelerating production and enhancing the quality of cell therapies across a wide range of disease areas. The power of the platform lies in its ability to harness transcription factors, the proteins that regulate gene expression and determine cell fate. By precisely controlling these factors, the platform can guide stem cells to differentiate into any desired cell type in a highly efficient and scalable manner.
Offering a single-step process that enables the efficient differentiation of iPSCs into various functional cell types with over 90% efficiency in just four days, GCTx claims that TFome has the potential to reduce the time associated with cell therapy development by up to 100 times compared with conventional methods, while also improving the potency, efficiency, and quality of the resulting cells. The company aims to leverage the platform to develop “off-the-shelf” iPSC-based medicines, which can be produced quickly and at a lower cost than current alternatives.
GCTx says TFome has already been validated in both laboratory and animal studies and has demonstrated the ability to generate what the company calls “SuperCells”—engineered cells tailored for specific therapeutic applications. While the company isn’t revealing specific indications at this point, the company suggests potential areas of interest could include gastrointestinal, neurological, and immunological disorders.
“This approach harnesses the transformative potential of transcription factor biology to guide iPSC cell fate into any differentiated cell type in a single, seamless step,” said Church, who is co-founder of a host of biotechs, including Nebula Genomics, Colossal Biosciences and Rejuvenate Bio. “By transcending the limitations of natural processes, it holds the promise to create cells that surpass the capabilities of those found in nature, generating a groundbreaking new class of SuperCell medicines to address diverse disease areas and reduce healthcare burdens.”
In addition to Church himself, GCTx’s co-founders include Dr Parastoo Khoshakhlagh, CEO, Dr Alex Ng, CEO, and Dr Cory Smith, head of discovery platforms.
“Cell therapies have revolutionized the treatment of certain disease areas; however, challenges in scaling these therapies and generating high quality products limit their full potential and patient accessibility,” said Khoshakhlagh. “Our novel cell programming approach enables the rapid and efficient production of fully optimized iPSC-based cell therapies through a streamlined, single-step process. This method enhances potency, efficiency, quality and cost-effectiveness compared to conventional approaches.”
“Unlike conventional iPSC approaches, TFome goes beyond traditional developmental biology by pushing the limits of the principle that cell identity is determined by the active gene regulatory networks governed by transcription factors,” said Ng. “This approach enables a more direct and precise control over cell fate, thereby setting a new standard in cell programming. We have validated our single-step cell fate programming approach across diverse cell types both in vitro and in vivo and have further engineered cells into SuperCells to tailor them for specific disease applications.”
The Series A funding was led by Cormorant Asset Management with participation from Mubadala Capital, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Bio + Health, Medical Excellence Capital, Cercano Management and Pear VC.
“By accelerating the production of iPSC-based therapies, the TFome platform unlocks unprecedented efficiency and scalability, which could lead to faster patient access to life-changing treatments,” said Mubadala’s Alaa Halawa.
