Life Science VC Firm Launches Quell with $43 Million Series A Round

On 5/20/19 Syncona Ltd ("Syncona") announced the foundation of Quell Therapeutics (Quell), a new cell therapy company, with a £35 million ($43 million) commitment in a Series A financing of which Syncona has committed £34.0 million with a further £1.0 million being contributed by UCL Technology Fund. Syncona will have a 69.3 per cent stake1 in the business, with the first tranche of the Series A commitment of £8.3m paid in March 2019.

Quell has been established with the aim of developing engineered T regulatory (Treg) cell therapies. Tregs are a subset of T cells with the potential to downregulate the immune system. Quell will seek to utilise the power of Treg cells to advance therapies for the management and treatment of a range of conditions such as solid organ transplant rejection, autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.

Syncona has significant domain expertise in the T-cell field, identifying Treg cells as an area of high interest in late 2017 and seeking to found a company with the potential to be a global leader in this emerging area. As part of the process, Syncona identified key opinion leaders and unified them behind a common goal of building a company to treat conditions of immune dysfunction utilising gene-modified cells. As a result, Quell has been founded in partnership with six leading experts in the Treg field, cell engineering, solid organ transplantation and autoimmune diseases from King's College London, UCL, and Hannover Medical School.