Appia Bio, a company launched to develop engineered allogeneic cell therapies from hematopoietic stem cells for cancer patients, has shuttered.
According to a LinkedIn post from Appia CEO JJ Kang, the developer — which emerged from stealth with a $52 million Series A in 2021 — “got to the cusp of filing our IND for clinical testing” before running out of funding.
The Los Angeles, California-based company inked an $875 million partnership with Kite in 2021 to develop chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-engineered invariant natural killer T (CAR-iNKT) cells using Appia’s ACUA technology platform for allogeneic cell therapy.
The first development candidate to come out of the collaboration was API-192, a first-in-class off-the-shelf allogeneic CAR-NKT cell therapy that expresses dual CARs targeting CD19 and CD20 and armored with soluble IL-15 for improved expansion and persistence. Appia had presented preclinical data in 2023.
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