Gilead Sciences is boosting support for a Bay Area startup looking to develop a new class of therapies for autoimmune diseases. Gilead, along with two venture capital groups, provided Kyverna Therapeutics with an infusion of $25 million and also struck a collaboration with the fledgling company.
On Monday, Kyverna announced it had closed a $25 million Series A investment from Gilead, Vida Ventures and Westlake Village BioPartners, which will be used to advance the company’s platform that combines advanced T cell engineering and synthetic biology technologies to suppress and eliminate autoreactive immune cells at the root cause of inflammatory disease. In addition to the cash, Gilead and Kyverna entered into a collaboration and license agreement to develop engineered T cell therapies for the treatment of autoimmune disease based on Kyverna’s synthetic Treg platform and synNotch technology from Gilead subsidiary Kite Pharma. Kyverna will be responsible for conducting research activities and initial clinical studies through proof-of-concept. Gilead will be granted an option to continue to develop and potentially commercialize any product that comes from the research.
Under terms of this agreement, Gilead will pay Kyverna $17.5 million in upfront cash. Kyverna could earn an additional $570 million in development and commercialization milestones, depending on how the research goes.
Dominic Borie, chief executive officer of Kyverna, called it one of the most exciting times in the industry when “a new modality has the potential to become the backbone of treatment for a variety of severe immune-related diseases.” Borie is an immunologist and transplant surgeon who joins Kyverna from Horizon Therapeutics where he served as head of External Research and Development. Prior to Horizon, Borie served in numerous leadership functions within Genentech focused on global clinical development of immunology therapies including two anti-CD20 molecules (rituximab and obinutuzumab) in development for orphan immunology indications. Before that, Borie was with Amgen where he served as Medical Director and Global Development Leader for Inflammation.
In addition to Borie, the Kyverna team includes Jeffrey Greve, who will serve as the company’s chief scientific officer. Prior to Kyverna, Greve founded and served as CSO of Delinia, an autoimmune disease company acquired by Celgene in 2017.
As part of the $25 million Series A, Fred Cohen, co-founder and senior managing director of Vida Ventures will serve as chairman of Kyverna’s board of directors.
“We are just beginning to see the potential for cell therapy and the opportunity to change the course of disease… At Vida, we have a long-standing commitment to advancing cell therapy. We believe the team at Kyverna, under Dominic’s stewardship and in partnership with Dr. Greve, the architect of the Kyverna scientific platform, has the ability to develop a new class of therapies for serious autoimmune diseases,” Cohen said in a statement.
