 A Johns Hopkins University biotech spinout has landed $150 million to get its cancer treatment into clinical trials and will establish a hub in Montgomery County. Clasp Therapeutics, which was officially launched Wednesday morning, secured the funding from New York’s Catalio Capital Management, Boston’s Third Rock Ventures, Denmark’s Novo Holdings and other health-focused backers. The nascent firm expects the capital to carry it through the early clinical stages, Clasp CEO Robert Ross said. The company’s new 8,350-square-foot office at 1450 Research Blvd. in Rockville will be used for dedicated protein engineering and manufacturing. Clasp is standing up its other base for research, clinical development and support functions in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It currently counts between 20 and 40 employees who will be split between the two offices, Ross said, declining to disclose the exact headcount. The firm’s decision to plant roots in both markets is notable, given its ties to Baltimore: The business comes from scientific founders and Johns Hopkins alums including Dr. Bert Vogelstein, a cancer geneticist and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, and Dr. Drew Pardoll, an immunooncology expert and university faculty member, who have found ways to help the immune system target cancer cells. Clasp intends to commercialize that work. Clasp landed on Rockville as an accessible location for workers coming from Northern Virginia as well as Maryland, Ross said. The decision not to set up shop in Baltimore was made before he came on board, he said, noting that wet lab space was available in each place. “It is also important for us to maintain close contact with the founders at Johns Hopkins, including Bert Vogelstein and his lab,” said Ross, who most recently CEO of Surface Oncology Inc. (NASDAQ: SURF), which was acquired by Redwood City, California’s Coherus BioSciences Inc. (NASDAQ: CHRS) in September. Vogelstein is behind many of Baltimore’s biggest biotech success stories, such as Haystack Oncology, which sold for $450 million last year, and Thrive Earlier Detection, which was acquired by cancer diagnostics giant Exact Sciences for $2.1 billion in 2020. Exact Sciences then said in January of this year it would shutter its Baltimore operations by the end of March. Vogelstein’s previous companies have focused on cancer diagnostics, not treatments, like Clasp. While his prior ventures’ work involved using distinct mutations in cancer cells to identify disease, Clasp’s innovations help the immune system destroy cancerous cells. Clasp is focusing on solid tumors “that have been hard to treat with standard immunotherapy,” targeting mutations in genes that can cause various types of cancers, Ross said. “Importantly, these mutations are completely specific to the tumor.” He declined to disclose a timeline for its programs to advance; it’s still early in the process, with its programs not yet in clinical trials. But after completing those studies, he said, the company would look to eventually seek the Food and Drug Administration’s approval “to bring novel medicines to patients.” The company has created a protein that can attach itself to a white blood cell, the main agent of the immune system, to help it target cancer cells. The protein binds to cancer cells while leaving normal cells alone. This mechanism should prevent some of the complications caused by cancer treatments like chemotherapy, which kill all fast-growing cells, often attacking normal bone marrow cells and the digestive tract. Since Clasp’s product does not have the same toxicity as other cancer treatments, patients should be able to handle higher doses to attack more aggressive cancers. “That’s the genius of what Bert [Vogelstein] and his lab pulled together and what’s so exciting here,” Ross said. “We can potentially get better and deeper responses because we can give higher doses.” Other immune system-based therapies are often prohibitively expensive because they require a blood sample to “rewire” cells to attack cancer. Ross hopes Clasp’s therapies can be effective without needing personalized care, since it is a protein that can bind to any immune cell. “The problem with those therapies is that they are very expensive when you have to make them individually for each patient,” Ross said.

Johns Hopkins cancer treatment spinout launches with $150M, establishes D.C.-area hub - Washington Business Journal

Clasp Therapeutics, a Johns Hopkins University biotech spinout, secured $150 million from investors like Catalio Capital Management, Third Rock Ventures, and Novo Holdings to advance its cancer treatment into clinical trials. The company, led by CEO Robert Ross, plans to establish a hub in Montgomery County and maintain a presence in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Clasp's focus is on solid tumors using a protein to target cancer cells, aiming to provide more effective treatments with fewer side effects.