Verismo Therapeutics
- 01/03/2023
- Pre Series A
- $7,000,000
Verismo Therapeutics is pioneering the development of novel chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) that enhance T-cell-based cellular immunotherapy for cancer, especially non-hematologic malignancies with few effective therapeutic options.
Verismo Therapeutic’s core technology is built upon CARs that are uniquely engineered to more realistically reflect the natural multichain design of killer immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIRs), an important family of immunologic receptors used by T cells and NK cells.
Preclinical studies show that SynKIR™-T cells, created by introducing these KIR-based CARs (KIR-CARs) into T cells, more effectively eliminate aggressive tumors in vivo when compared with T cells bearing traditional 2nd generation CAR designs found in current FDA approved CAR-T cell therapies.
- Industry Biotechnology Research
- Website https://verismotherapeutics.com/
- LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/verismo-therapeutics/
Related People
Bryan KimCo Founder
Bryan has been a leader for public and private bio companies: from bio start-ups to public biopharmaceutical companies and revenue-generating CMO companies.
He was one of the starting members at VGX Pharmaceuticals, a start-up from Penn. He headed the corporate development and brought in Needham & Co. to complete a merger with Inovio Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: INO) in 2009. He also led a series of funding that resulted in more than $20M for Phase I and II clinical trials for 4 DNA-vaccine pipelines in the US. In 2013, Inovio signed a global licensing deal with Roche for its DNA-vaccine based pipelines.
Bryan was a co-founder/CEO at GeneOne Life Sciences (former VGX International), a KOSPI public biotech company in Korea. He orchestrated the public company acquisition and initiated a new drug development division within the company in 2005. As a global leader in DNA vaccine, the company completed the first-ever preventive DNA vaccine phase 1 clinical trials in Asia. He led a series of public funding in a total of $38M and structured numerous business deals, including in-/out-licensing pipelines with the US, EU, and Asian companies.
In 2008, the company acquired a DNA vaccine CMO company in Houston. As CEO, he led the restructuring and expansions of the company, successfully built new marketing teams, and implemented strategies. The company doubled its manufacturing capacity with a series of investment-in from partners. In 2010, the revenues were quadrupled (4x) and achieved its first profit.
Inovio and GeneOne were at USD 3.41B combined in market capitalization as of 12/01/2020.
Bryan was named Forbes Korea’s CEO of the year in 2010 and Fortunes Korea’s Best CEOs in 2011. He placed GeneOne on the KOSPI 200 index in 2008.
Prior to joining the company, he was a clinical associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He holds a Doctor of Dental Medicine from the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine, a BA in Economics and a BS in Biological Sciences from the University of California at Irvine.