Quell Therapeutics

Founded: 2019
CEO: Iain McGill
Founders: Giovanna Lombardi
Marc Martinez-Llordella
Alberto Sanchez-Fueyo
Hans Stauss
Emma Morris
Elmar Jaeckel
Shareholding: 34%
Stage: Clinical
Number of employees: 150+
Upfront payment received from collaboration with AstraZeneca: $85m

Unless stated all financials at 31 December 2024

Quell website

Quell Therapeutics was founded 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 was founded in partnership with six prominent immunological experts from King’s College London, University College London and Hannover Medical School, and is led by Iain McGill, a seasoned pharmaceutical and biotech executive.

Tregs are capable of down regulating the immune system by ‘putting on a brake’ to prevent over activation and resultant pathological immune responses.

Quell is employing proprietary and innovative technologies to genetically enhance Tregs, to target them to particular sites within the body, for example to the liver in their lead programme in liver transplantation. These engineered Tregs have the potential to control unwanted immune activity which may enable the treatment of patients with autoimmune and inflammatory disease as well as the potential to prevent organ rejection without taking immunosuppressive medication; making transplantation the full cure it was always intended to be.

Investment thesis

Potential pipeline to treat serious, chronic conditions mediated by the immune system
Potential to be first-in-class in CAR Tregs; an early mover in the space

Unmet medical need

Current standard of care for prevention of solid organ transplant rejection is life-long immunosuppression which results in an array of serious long-term side effects, such as kidney toxicity, infections and cancer, significantly impacting patient quality of life¹

Market opportunity

15,000 liver transplants p.a across US and Europe²

¹https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/clinical-investigation-immunosuppressants-solid-organ-transplantation

² Source: OPTN/SRTR 2016 Annual Data report: Liver; EDQM Volume 20 2015

Best ideas Pre-clinical Clinical Late Clinical BLA

Quell Therapeutics

QEL-001 - liver transplant

Syncona team

Elisa Petris

Elisa is a Partner of Syncona Investment Management Limited. She is a Director on the Board of Quell Therapeutics, Beacon Therapeutics and Forcefield Therapeutics and was previously on the Board of former portfolio companies Blue Earth Diagnostics and Neogene, and of current portfolio company Achilles Therapeutics. She was closely involved in the foundation of Quell, Blue Earth, Achilles and Beaco…

View Elisa's biography

Position

Board member

Qualification

PhD