Epitopea’s $31m pre-Series A is boost for RNA immunotherapies clinical trials
Epitopea’s transatlantic business model has been boosted by a $31million pre-Series A financing round which supports the cancer immunotherapeutics company’s 2026 clinical trials goal.
Based in Montreal, Canada, and on Station Road, Cambridge, Epitopea’s proprietary CryptoMap platform is helping to develop accessible off-the-shelf RNA-based immunotherapies for use in hard-to-treat cancers by targeting a new class of untapped tumour-specific antigens.
These aberrantly-expressed antigens, known as Cryptigen TSAs, are hidden within cancer’s ‘junk’ DNA and are broadly shared across multiple patients with the same tumour type.
The pre-Series A financing brings the total capital raised by Epitopea to more than $45million. New investors Investissement Québec, adMare BioInnovations and Jonathan Milner join existing investors Advent Life Sciences, CTI Life Sciences, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Fonds de Solidarité FTQ, the Harrington Discovery Institute, IRICoR and Novateur Ventures, all of whom also participated in this financing round.
Dr Alan Rigby, Epitopea’s CEO, said: “We believe that more durable cancer therapies are needed to transform the lives of cancer patients diagnosed with hard-to-treat solid tumours where overall survival is still poor for most patients.
“In this round we would like to warmly welcome new investors Investissement Québec, adMare BioInnovations and Jonathan Milner, whose participation complements the continued passionate support of our existing transatlantic investor syndicate.
This pre-Series A raise provides the necessary finances to accelerate our development campaigns and transition to a clinical-stage company with a focused commitment of delivering our transformational RNA cancer immunotherapy into the clinic in 2026.”
He added: “This additional financing will support strategic pre-clinical discovery in solid tumours of interest while accelerating our near-term clinical development plans for Epitopea’s next-generation, tumour selective, off-the-shelf, RNA-based immunotherapies that we believe have the potential to extend the durability of clinical response in patients.”
Asked whether an ‘off-the-shelf’ treatment would be oral, Dr Rigby said: “Our approach means it is possible to optimise treatment for the greatest immune response and greatest patient coverage.
“At Epitopea the use of RNA-based immunotherapy is meant to be a ‘broad’ comment that captures and covers the multiple therapeutic modalities that one could construct with aberrantly expressed tumour specific antigens – aeTSAs – that we identify from patient material.
“At Epitopea we are actively looking to deploy the RNA-based immunotherapeutic technology that played a major role in controlling Covid-19 infections [mRNA-loaded lipid nanoparticles, or LNPs] to train the immune system to recognise and ultimately destroy cancer cells. We believe and expect that this approach will lead to significant improvements in the long-term survival of cancer patients following their initial cancer diagnoses.”
The R&D team on Cambridge’s Station Road is growing fast, thanks also to non-dilutive funding from Innovate UK’s Cancer Therapeutics programme received in September, which Dr Rigby says “will enable the addition of talented researchers to the growing Epitopea team”.
He notes: “Currently, our vaccine technology group, which is led by our chief scientific officer, Dr Jon Moore, is based in Cambridge UK.”
