바이오스펙테이터

바이오스펙테이터 Sungmin Kim 기자

Advances clinical trials Next generation CD19 CAR-T ‘CRC01’ this year, overcoming the immune suppression environment…In cooperation with the medical staff of Samsung Seoul Hospital

Curocell, the first company specializing in developing CAR-T treatments in Korea, succeeded in attracting investment in Series C worth 44 billion won.

Prior to this, Curocell attracted an investment of 15 billion won for Series B in January last year, and the total accumulated investment so far is 61.5 billion won. Curocell plans to be listed next year.

In this series C, existing investment institutions, Stick Ventures, and Atinum Investment, made subsequent investments, and new investment institutions such as DS Asset Management, Seoul Investment Partners, IMM Investment, Aju IB Investment, Ulmus Investment, LB Investment, Yukyung PSG Asset Management, E&Venture Partners, JX Partners, Company K Partners, K2 Investment Partners, Quad Asset Management, and Hana Ventures participated.

The investment funds will be used to accelerate the start of clinical trials and subsequent pipeline development of the next-generation CD-19 CAR-T treatment, ‘CRC01’, by the end of this year. CRC01 is a drug that has reduced the expression of immune checkpoint molecules TIGIT and PD-1 that can suppress the anti-cancer activity of T cells in the existing drug design of CD19 CAR-T such as Kymriah and Yescarta.

Curocell expects to begin conducting Korea's first CAR-T clinical trial for lymphoma patients with the next-generation CAR-T treatment, CRC01.

“Curocell is set to start clinical trials of next-generation CAR-T treatments that can overcome the limitations of traditional CAR-T treatments,” said Gunsoo Kim, CEO of Curocell. Although the development of domestic CAR-T treatments is lagging behind the United States and Europe, I believe that we can overtake the global leading company based on the differentiated technology only of Curocell.”

The core technology of Curocell is the OVIS™ (OVercome Immune Suppression) platform, a technology jointly developed by Curocell and the KAIST research group, to overcome the immunosuppressive environment in cancer. It is explained that the OVIS™ technology can be applied to various CAR-T treatments targeting solid cancer as well as blood cancer.

With full-fledged domestic clinical development awaiting, Curocell completed building the latest GMP facility of a size of 520m2 for the production of immune cell therapeutics at Samsung Seoul Hospital’s Future Medical Center earlier this year. Curocell also promotes CAR-T clinical practice in cooperation with the medical staff of Samsung Seoul Hospital, showing an ideal cooperation model of university hospital and Biotech in the field of new drug development of cell therapies.