Jasper Therapeutics Secures $14.1M in Series A+ Financing to Advance JSP191 for Rare Monogenic and Autoimmune Diseases

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) learned via Business Wire that on January 9, 2020, U.S. biotechnology company Jasper Therapeutics announced an additional $14.1 million to expand its Series A financing round. The round was led by the Swiss venture capital firm Roche Venture Fund, with other investors undisclosed. To date, the company has raised more than $50 million in total funding.

The initial Series A financing round was led by the international investment group Abingworth and U.S.-based Qiming Venture Partners, with other investors including Surveyor Capital and Alexandria Venture Investments, raising $35 million.

Jasper Therapeutics is a biotechnology company focused on hematopoietic cell transplantation therapies, headquartered in California, United States. The company is dedicated to providing safe conditioning regimens to expand the therapeutic applications of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and gene therapy.

Hematopoietic stem cells are rare cells located in the bone marrow. These stem cells may harbor acquired or genetic abnormalities, thereby triggering a variety of diseases. Currently, the only method for treating such conditions is to transplant and engraft healthy stem cells to replace defective or malignant hematopoietic stem cells in the patient’s bone marrow. However, successful transplantation requires patients to undergo toxic radiotherapy and chemotherapy, which cause DNA damage; the resulting toxicity remains in the body in the short or long term, leading to organ damage. Consequently, many patients who could benefit from hematopoietic stem cell transplantation are ineligible, creating an urgent need for an effective yet non-toxic novel approach to enable them to receive this treatment.

Jasper Therapeutics’ lead product, JSP191, is a humanized monoclonal antibody targeting CD117 on hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and an agent capable of clearing HSCs from the bone marrow. JSP191 blocks the binding of stem cell factor (SCF) to CD117—an interaction essential for stem cell survival in humans—and disrupts critical survival signals, thereby inducing stem cell death and creating empty niches in the bone marrow to facilitate engraftment of donor or gene-corrected transplant cells. Clinical studies have demonstrated that JSP191 can safely eliminate abnormal and diseased hematopoietic stem cells.

Upon completion of this funding round, Jasper Therapeutics intends to utilize the proceeds to further advance the development of JSP191. To date, the company has evaluated JSP191 in more than 80 healthy volunteers and patients. Moving forward, they plan to expand their studies to include patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) or myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) who are undergoing hematopoietic cell transplantation, with the aim of establishing JSP191 as a conditioning regimen for patients with other rare and ultra-rare monogenic diseases as well as autoimmune disorders.

Roche Venture Fund, established in 2002 and headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, is a corporate venture capital firm focused on investing in early-stage companies. To date, Roche has allocated approximately $500 million to invest in and foster the growth of more than 60 innovative life sciences companies that have achieved market success, maintaining a portfolio of around 30 companies across 10 countries in Europe, North America, and the Asia-Pacific region.

(Compiled by Yang Xiaohui)