Biotech Startup Cargo Therapeutics Raises $200M for Cancer Cell Therapies

Cargo Therapeutics, a biotech company closed a $200 million oversubscribed and upsized Series A financing round from a group of investors to develop a new kind of cancer cell therapy for people with lymphoma whose cancer has relapsed or grown resistant to existing cellular treatments.

The round was co-led by Third Rock Ventures, RTW Investments, LP and Perceptive Xontogeny Venture Fund, and includes seven new investors, founding investor Samsara BioCapital and existing seed investors Red Tree Venture Capital and Emerson Collective.

The San Mateo, CA-based company has several clinical trials that are in progress and aims to use the fresh capital to boost the development and testing of its therapies.

Cargo’s experimental treatment is a form of personalized cell therapy known as CAR-T. While several CAR-T therapies are approved in the US to treat lymphoma, they’re all aimed at a protein called CD19. Cargo’s therapy targets another protein called CD22 instead, which its backers see as a way around cancers that have returned or learned to evade CD19-directed treatment.