Immuneel Therapeutics, a cell and gene therapy startup co-founded by Biocon founder Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, secured Series B funding to scale up its manufacturing capacity for cell therapy targeting a specific group of blood cancers.
The Bengaluru-based startup announced it raised more than Rs 100 crore ($10.5 million) in a funding round that saw participation from current and new investors, according to a statement.
This includes new investors such as Singularity AMC, Zerodha's Rainmatter and several high-net-worth individuals, the company said. Existing investors including Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Eight Roads Ventures and F-Prime Capital also participated in the round.
The capital raised will go towards scaling up its manufacturing capacity; supporting the commercialisation of Qartemi, a cell therapy designed for a particular kind of lymphoma; and expanding its presence across the Asia Pacific and Middle East, among other things.
Immuneel's latest fundraise comes nearly four years after it raised around $15 million (Rs 116 crore at the time) in a Series A funding round co-led by Eight Roads Ventures, True North and F-Prime Capital, with participation from existing investors.
"This fundraise strengthens our ability to build a globally competitive CAR-T platform from India," Shaw said in a statement.
Founded in 2019, Immuneel is a clinical-stage biotech company which operates a Chimeric Antigen Receptor T (CAR-T) cell therapy platform. CAR T cell therapy involves modifying a patient's T-cells to target and destroy cancer cells. Last year, the company commercially launched its first approved CAR-T therapy named Qartemi, to treat blood cancers such as non-Hodgkin lymphoma and leukaemia.
The startup has a facility in Bengaluru that does "high-precision" manufacturing for personalised medicine.
Immuneel Therapeutics CEO Amit Mookim told VCCircle that the company is currently expanding the CAR-T capacity in the facility—which currently caters to 300-500 patients annually—to at least 1,000 patients annually. In FY26, the biotech platform treated 100 patients with CAR-T therapy, with each treatment costing Rs 35-40 lakhs, Mookim said.
Mookim said the company is also expanding the scope of the CAR-T therapy to include autoimmune diseases such as Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE).
