CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Garuda Therapeutics (Garuda), a company creating off-the-shelf, durable blood stem cell-based cellular therapies, today announced a $62 million Series B financing led by Northpond Ventures, OrbiMed Advisors, Cormorant Asset Management, and Aisling Capital, along with participation from Sectoral Asset Management, Mass General Brigham Ventures, Alexandria Venture Investments, and other elite investors and individuals. This brings the total amount of funding for the company to $134 million. The company also announced the appointment of Raymond J. Kelleher, M.D., Ph.D., Managing Director at Cormorant Asset Management, to its Board of Directors.
Like bone marrow transplants, Garuda’s technology has the potential to address, and possibly cure, more than 120 diseases for a diverse population of patients with unmet medical need. Proceeds from the financing will be used to further advance the development of Garuda’s platform for generation of off-the-shelf, self-renewing blood stem cells towards the clinic as potential treatment for patients with hematological diseases. The Series B funding will also enable Garuda to continue the advancement of its proprietary HSC-derived off-the-shelf, durable immune cell program for treating patients with oncologic disorders. The funding will also further advance Garuda’s continued development of HLA-matched pluripotent stem cells greatly broadening the eligibility of patients and increasing access to blood and other cellular therapies in regenerative medicine.
“Garuda is built upon the foundation of what we consider to be the most de-risked and highly validated blood stem cell-based cell therapy approach, and has the potential to overcome challenges to the current standard of care, including lack of consistency, scalability, durability, affordability, and availability of suitable healthy donors. We are grateful for the continued strong financial support from our elite institutional investors that will help enable us to bring our off-the-shelf durable blood stem cell and immune cell programs to patients in need,” said Dhvanit Shah, Ph.D., Co-Founder and CEO of Garuda. “Garuda’s Series B investment translates directly into the advancement of two lead programs for hematology and oncology indications. This funding milestone is another crucial step to delivering life-changing cellular therapeutics to patients around the world afflicted by treatable, and often curable, diseases.”
About Garuda Therapeutics
Garuda Therapeutics seeks to create a world that eliminates the dependency on donor or patient cells for blood stem cell transplants. Our platform technology for generating off-the-shelf, self-renewing blood stem cells is poised to provide patients with rapid and broad access to consistent, durable, HLA-compatible and transgene-free blood stem cell therapies. Like bone marrow transplants, our technology could provide potentially curative therapies for more than 120 diseases. https://garudatx.com/
