Pandion Therapeutics has obtained $58 million in financing to continue developing treatments for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, including bowel disorders.
Polaris Partners, Versant Ventures and Roche Venture Fund led the financing round. SR One and BioInnovation Capital also participated.
Pandion uses its proprietary technology platform to create bispecific antibodies. It engineers the artificial proteins to bind to two proteins known as antigens associated with a disease.
The bispecific antibodies hone in on the site of inflammation with the ultimate goal of regulating the immune activity in a way that restores the body’s balance. This targeted approach avoids the immunosuppression of the entire body that other autoimmune disease treatments generate. The broader, untargeted approach is also a hallmark of therapies designed to prevent the body from rejecting a transplant.
Pandion is using its platform to develop therapies for gut, liver, kidney, pancreas and skin disorders.
The company “is positioned to shift the paradigm for treating inflammatory and autoimmune diseases as well as transplant recipients by developing therapeutic antibodies that act at the local site of disease, offering the potential for significantly improved therapeutic options beyond systemic immunosuppressive treatments,” Alan Crane, Pandion’s board chairman, said in a press release.
Pandion believes its targeted approach will make its treatments more effective than others. It has already filed several patent requests on its technology platform and the treatments arising from it.
Meanwhile, the company announced two leadership appointments — Anthony J. Coyle to CEO and Jo Viney to chief scientific officer.
“Recent advances in the field of immunology and immuno-oncology, particularly related to how tumors disarm the immune system locally, have opened up dramatic new insights for regulating immune function in a more precise and localized way to act directly at the site of disease,” Coyle said. “At Pandion, we are translating these new understandings of the immune system to develop therapeutic antibodies that can set a new standard for treating a variety of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases to meaningfully impact the lives of many patients.”