Exclusive: New York biotech debuts with $16M to find new ways to make solid cancer cell therapies

A new biotech is com­ing out of stealth with $16 mil­lion to de­vel­op cell ther­a­pies for sol­id can­cers — an area where sci­en­tists have had lim­it­ed suc­cess.

OverT Bio (pro­nounced “overt,” not “over-T”) launched Mon­day, found­ed by New York Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Neville San­jana and his for­mer post­doc Mat Legut.

The start­up is de­vel­op­ing a screen­ing plat­form which search­es for genes that, when over­ex­pressed, could help T cells be­come bet­ter agents against sol­id tu­mor can­cers. While there have been sev­er­al cell ther­a­pies ap­proved for blood can­cers, de­vel­op­ing them for sol­id tu­mors has proven far more chal­leng­ing. On­ly one cell ther­a­py has been ap­proved for a sol­id tu­mor can­cer: Io­vance’s tu­mor-in­fil­trat­ing lym­pho­cyte-based ther­a­py Am­tagvi, which won FDA ap­proval in Feb­ru­ary for ad­vanced melanoma.

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