On Jun 7, 2022 Vittoria Biotherapeutics reported it spun out of a University of Pennsylvania research lab is emerging from stealth mode with nearly $10 million from a seed funding round (Company Pipeline, viTToria biotherapeutics, FEB 10, 2023, View Source [SID1234627036]).
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Vittoria Biotherapeutics’ mission is to overcome current limitations of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapeutics by using its unique cell engineering and gene editing technologies to create new therapies that address unmet clinical needs.
The technology the company is attempting to commercialize was developed by Dr. Marco Ruella, a hematologist from Italy who came to the United States 10 years ago to study under Penn CAR T-cell pioneers Dr. Carl June and Saar Gill.
Ruella, Vittoria’s scientific founder, is an assistant professor of medicine at the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine. He is also scientific director of the lymphoma program at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
Ruella said he got the idea to start a company about a year ago to further develop his method of augmenting CAR T-cell therapy with gene editing.
"I was very confident with my science, but not comfortable at all about what my next steps should be," Ruella said.
Gill, co-director of cell therapy and transplantation at Penn, co-founded two local cell and gene therapy companies: Carisma Therapeutics and Interius Biotherapeutics. He recommended Ruella talk with Bruce Peacock, a longtime life sciences industry entrepreneur and investor who was CEO at Adolor and Orthovita, held senior positions at Centocor and Cephalon, and is an investor and director at Carisma and Interius.
"Marco could see what he had and realized he needed a company to translate what he had accomplished into a meaningful therapy," Peacock said.
Peacock knew just the person to lead such a startup.
Prior to the company’s sale, Peacock was a major investor and board member at Invisible Sentinel, a Philadelphia life sciences company that had developed DNA contamination detection tools for the food, beer and wine industries. He knew its CEO, Nicholas Siciliano, was looking for his next challenge after Invisible Sentinel, where Siciliano is still a consultant, was acquired by bioMerieux of France for $75 million in 2019.
The trio — Ruella, Peacock and Siciliano — ended up co-founding the company, with Siciliano taking the CEO role and Peacock serving as board chairman.
"We fell in love with Marco and the science," Siciliano said. "The stars aligned."