Corner Therapeutics to hyperactivate ‘the brains of the immune system’ with $54M launch

Corner Therapeutics’ $54 million Series A will be used to bring new immunotherapies for cancer and infectious diseases into the clinic, the company said Thursday.

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Clik here to view.Steve Altschuler

The startup is led by Steve Altschuler, who co-founded Spark Therapeutics and was previously CEO of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Altschuler serves as the managing director of healthcare ventures at Ziff Capital Partners, which led Corner’s Series A raise. Cockrell Interests, Tanis Ventures and Sandia Holdings also contributed to the raise.

Corner’s platforms center on the idea of stimulating dendritic cells, which the company’s chief business and financial officer Nick Seaver described in an interview with Endpoints News as “the brains of the immune system.” Dendritic cells initiate the response from other immune cells by presenting antigens to them.

The startup’s scientific founders include Harvard professors Jonathan Kagan and ​​Jeff Karp, as well as Verve Therapeutics chief scientist Andrew Bellinger.  The company boasts two platforms to activate dendritic cells, one of which uses “molecules that mimic infection and tissue damage,” Altschuler said. The second stimulates dendritic cells using mRNA delivered via fatty acid particles.

The startup plans to have its first program for influenza in the clinic in the first quarter of 2025. That program is pairing its first platform with CSL Seqirus’ flu vaccine Afluria.

“The Afluria vaccine is very good at generating antibodies, but has traditionally not worked very well in terms of cellular immunity. The other area where it’s been limited is its ability to work in the elderly, so those are both areas that are of interest to us,” Altschuler said.

Its second program is an HIV vaccine that is partnered with the Gates Foundation. Altschuler said the problem with investigational HIV vaccines is that they don’t generate a robust T cell response — which would help the immune system recognize the pathogen after a first exposure. The goal of its hyperactivation platform is to help boost that much-needed response.

Editor’s note: This story was updated with additional information on Corner’s programs.