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Thymmune Therapeutics

Organization Description

Thymmune Therapeutics is a biotechnology company developing a machine learning-driven thymic cell engineering platform to restore normal immune function in aging and disease. The company’s cutting-edge approach in [induced pluripotent stem cell-derived thymic epithelial cell (iPS-TEC)] manufacturing can generate off-the-shelf cells at scale. The company is developing a pipeline of therapies to treat immunodeficiencies, transplant-related, and autoimmune disorders.”

Thymune was founded in 2019 by Stan Wang, M.D., Ph.D. a former member of George Church’s lab at Harvard Medical School. “In 2021, Thymmune established its base of operations in Kendall Square in Cambridge. The same year, it won five Golden Tickets – a record in the Boston area – from big sponsors: Pfizer, Novo Nordisk, LG Chem Life Sciences, Boehringer Ingelheim and Astellas.”

In 2023, the company secured $7 million in seed financing led by Pillar VC, with participation from New York Blood Center’s NYBC Ventures, former Alnylam CEO John Maraganore, and Church. In September of that year, the company announced that they had been awarded “up to” $37 million in funding to the Thymus Rejuvenation project by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) — the Department of Health and Human Services’ “DARPA for health.”

The goal phase one of the Thymus Rejuvenation project is to use their human iPS-TECs to restore T-cell development in thymus-incompetent animals, and slow immunologic aging in animal models. The thymus is the site where early immune cells mature into T-cells, which play a critical role in fighting infections. In phase two, they would scale up the process for transplantation and demonstrate functional immunity in animal models and a viable pathway to the clinic.

The company’s path to clinic will be athymia, a rare congenital disorder in which children are born without a thymus. Such children are unable to produce T-cells and are highly vulnerable to infectious disease. Without treatment, athymic infants typically die by age two or three. Historically, athymic children have been given thymic transplants, which had a long waitlist and were quite invasive although a new treatment introduced in 2021 called Rethymic has facilitated the process and improved outcomes.