RegCell, a privately held biotechnology company developing cell therapies for people with autoimmune diseases, announced approximately $66 million in new equity and grant funding on September 15. The Emeryville, California-based company aims to restore immune tolerance—the ability to leave the body's own tissues unharmed—and will use the financing to advance its experimental treatments toward clinical testing.
Its process starts with disease-driving T cells and changes their biological programming to produce regulatory T cells, known as Tregs, matched to the same immune targets. RegCell says these reprogrammed cells are designed to restrain the harmful immune response while preserving normal immune function. The platform uses epigenetic reprogramming, which changes how cells operate without requiring gene editing.
That approach is intended to help patients whose disease involves several immune targets, or targets researchers have not identified. RegCell says its platform can address both situations. Its proposed distinction is selective control of the autoimmune response, with lasting immune tolerance as the therapeutic goal. Those benefits remain objectives for clinical development, rather than demonstrated outcomes in patients described in the financing announcement.
Playground Global led the closed $44 million Series A, with participants including Global Brain, Mitsui Chemicals, LG Technology Ventures and existing investors. Playground's Jory Bell will join the board. Separately, Japan's Agency for Medical Research and Development, or AMED, awarded a second grant of ¥3.4 billion, approximately $22 million according to RegCell. The grant supplies capital without selling additional equity and supports the platform's next generation and an additional Phase 2 proof-of-concept study.
Manufacturing is another part of bringing that science into a usable treatment. In a collaboration reported by PharmaSource in February, RegCell arranged to transfer its lead program to Kincell Bio for process development, manufacturing optimization and production of clinical supplies. Kincell is a manufacturing partner, helping establish how the cells will be produced and tested consistently as the program moves toward trials.
RegCell's first AMED award supported development in autoimmune liver diseases; the new funding is intended to extend clinical development into a second autoimmune indication and support an investigational new drug submission. That puts two practical tests ahead of the company: producing dependable supplies of the reprogrammed cells and establishing whether their targeted immune effects translate into meaningful benefit for patients.