- Nanna Luneborg, PhD, MBA, General Partner at Forbion to join Capstan Board of Directors
- Capstan is the tenth investment from the Forbion Growth Opportunities Fund II
Naarden, March 20, 2024 – Forbion, a leading European life sciences venture capital firm, today announces its participation as a new investor in the closing of a $175M oversubscribed Series B financing in Capstan Therapeutics, Inc. (“Capstan”). Capstan is a biotechnology company dedicated to advancing in vivo reprogramming of cells through RNA delivery using targeted lipid nanoparticles (tLNP).
The Series B financing was led by RA Capital Management, with additional participation from new investors Johnson and Johnson Innovation, Mubadala Capital, Perceptive Advisors, and Sofinnova Investments. Capstan’s existing investors Alexandria Venture Investments, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Leaps by Bayer, Novartis Venture Fund, OrbiMed Advisors, Pfizer Ventures, Polaris Partners, and Vida Ventures also participated in the round. Capstan marks the tenth investment from Forbion’s Growth Opportunities II Fund which raised €600 million in 2023.
The Company also announced the appointment of Forbion General Partner Nanna Luneborg, PhD, MBA, to its Board of Directors. Commenting on her appointment to the Capstan Board Nanna Luneborg said, “We are delighted to join the outstanding team and investor syndicate at Capstan Therapeutics. Capstan is pioneering in vivo CAR-T therapy, eliminating the need for ex vivo cell modification, and with the potential to create a scalable, off-the-shelf product to the benefit of patients across multiple different diseases.”
The proceeds from the Series B financing will be used to advance CPTX2309, Capstan’s in vivo chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) lead candidate, to early clinical proof-of-concept in autoimmune disorders, and to further develop Capstan’s tLNP pipeline. CPTX2309, a product of Capstan’s tLNP platform, delivers an mRNA payload encoding for an anti-CD19 CAR to CD8-expressing T cells, effectively engineering CAR-T cells in vivo. The therapeutic goal of this approach is to achieve a reset of the immune system through rapid deep B cell depletion in both blood and lymphoid tissues, without the challenges of conventional ex vivo CAR-T.
