Sean Ainsworth hopes to strike biotech gold, again, joining Seattle-based Immusoft Corp. as CEO and chairman. Immusoft is a gene-therapy company that hopes to use a patient’s immune cells to treat diseases, including MPS-I, or mucopolysaccharidosis type I, a rare genetic disease that is expected to be Immusoft’s first clinical application. The company uses a cell-culture system invented by Nobel laureate David Baltimore that it calls Immune System Programming.
SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Immusoft Corporation, a Seattle, Wash.-based gene therapy company, announced today it has closed a $3M initial tranche of a Series B financing. The full Series B is underway. The round is expected to provide Immusoft the funding it needs to complete its Phase I/II clinical trial in MPS-I (Mucopolysaccharidoses type I) and advance its pipeline, which uses its proprietary Immune System Programming (ISP™) approach to B cell modification for treating diseases.
Immusoft is looking to get its gene therapy technology into clinical trials, and the Seattle startup announced Friday that it has raised $3 million to kickstart that process. The funding is first part of the company’s ongoing Series B…. Veteran biotech executive Sean Ainsworth is joining the company as its new CEO, filling the shoes of the company’s Founder and longtime CEO Matthew Scholz. Scholz is transitioning to become the company’s CTO and will retain his position on the board of directors.
SEATTLE, Wash. (November 1, 2016)— Immusoft Corporation, a Seattle, Wash.-based gene therapy company, has closed on $2.74 million of a $3 million fundraising round. Founders Fund’s FF Science and Technium Partners led the investment. The round was oversubscribed and Immusoft says it expects to close on the remaining amount shortly.
Immusoft has closed $2.7 million in Series A3 funding. The Seattle-based gene therapy startup developed technology that uses a patient’s immune cells to cure disease. It will use the funding to prepare for a new drug trial with the Food and Drug Administration.“The capital raised in this round will give us the resources we need to submit our Investigational New Drug application,” founder and CEO Matthew Scholz said in a news release. “We are grateful to our investors and for the speed in which we were able to close our latest effort to raise capital.”
If the body is driven more by information than by chemistry, why not treat disease with information? This question led Matthew Scholz to biology, and, ultimately, to Immusoft Corporation, a Seattle company he founded in 2009. Immusoft technology programs B cells, part of the body’s immune system, to treat disease. … By tweaking the code that tells the cells what to produce, Immusoft can make them into tiny treatment factories that continue to operate inside the body. In March, Immusoft acquired Minneapolis-based Discovery Genomics, which has a process that makes it far easier and cheaper to program the cells.
On March 8, one of the first companies we funded, Immusoft, announced it has acquired Discovery Genomics, Inc., bringing new expertise and technologies to its therapeutic platform. We asked Matthew Scholz, CEO, if he could share the story behind the acquisition and what it means for Immusoft going forward.
A Seattle biotech is working on technology that resembles the plot of Jurassic Park. Immusoft just acquired Minneapolis-based Discovery Genomics, a company that makes it possible for researchers to cut and paste DNA. The technology is called the Sleeping Beauty Transposon System. It gets its name from the process used to create it. … “In effect, they woke it up from an evolutionary sleep, which is how the name Sleeping Beauty became applied to it,” Immusoft CEO Matthew Scholz said. … Rather than making dinosaurs on a private island, though, Immusoft plans to make treatments for genetic diseases.
Immusoft, a Seattle-based biotech startup that has developed a way to manipulate human immune cells, today announced the acquisition of Discovery Genomics, a 16-year-old company based in Minneapolis, Minn. … Immusoft CEO Matthew Scholz said that his company acquired Discovery Genomics to gain its scientific expertise and key technology called the Sleeping Beauty Transposon System, which is used to deliver genes into cells to prevent or alleviate a disease state, all without using a virus. “Our two companies share a culture of innovation and a desire to change the way many diseases can be treated,” Scholz said in a statement. “It is my hope and expectation that combining our expertise and technology will help us in this pursuit.”
