French CAR-T biotech Mnemo Therapeutics shutters US operations

A Sofinnova-backed CAR-T maker has shut down its New York and Princeton, NJ sites and will continue operating out of its Paris hub.

Mnemo Therapeutics turned the lights off at its US operations effective immediately on Feb. 23, according to employees’ posts on LinkedIn and confirmation from co-founder and operating chief Alain Maiore.

Alain Maiore

“When Sebastian [Amigorena] and I started Mnemo Tx, we were looking to build a company where the human value of ‘standing shoulder to shoulder’ in difficult time would typify the DNA of our teams across the ocean,” Maiore wrote on LinkedIn in recent days. “The decision we had to make about shutting down our US operations, to move back our CT effort to Europe, next to our target discovery platform was a very difficult one.”

The biotech set out to create new immunotherapies for patients with cancer, hoping to be part of the next generation of autologous CAR-T cell therapies, which take from a patient’s own cells. Mnemo also wants to go after the allogeneic option, where cells are taken from other patients but is yet to be approved for CAR-T cell therapies.

Last spring, the biotech brought on former Bayer oncology business leader Robert LaCaze as CEO. In a statement emailed to Endpoints News, LaCaze said Mnemo refocused a “substantial portion” of its resources and had two recent Science Immunology publications to show for its discovery engine.

Academic partnerships remain with Institut Curie, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and UC San Francisco, he added. The CEO declined to disclose how many employees were impacted.

“While cell therapy remains an important area of interest, the Company will explore the right partnerships and paths based on the type of target to maximize a range of therapeutic modalities, including cell therapy based on the proprietary SUV technology, vaccines, mAbs and ADCs,” LaCaze said in the statement.

Maiore, Amigorena from French cancer research center Institut Curie, and Michel Sadelain from MSK (also a co-founder of Juno Therapeutics) teamed up in 2019 to form the startup. The co-founding bench also includes Isabelle Rivière, MSK’s cell therapy manufacturing lead, and Justin Eyquem, a former postdoc in Sadelain’s lab.

Robert LaCaze

They debuted Mnemo in 2021 with $90 million from Sofinnova, Casdin Capital, Redmile, Emerson Collective and Alexandria Venture Investments.

The goal, per executives’ comments to Endpoints at the time of launch, was to get in the clinic around 2023-2024 with an autologous CAR-T in solid tumors and an allogeneic therapy in hematology.

Christine Foster

Leading the scientific operations was CSO François Gaudet, who formerly led multiple myeloma drug discovery at Johnson & Johnson and Janssen. His tenure included work on teclistamab, which received an accelerated nod as Tecvayli last October, and talquetamab, which is at the FDA’s doorsteps with Phase II data.

Gaudet no longer appears as an executive on Mnemo’s website. Co-founder Amigorena is listed as CSO, after having been given the SVP of immunology title last fall, at the same time former Metagenomi business chief Christine Foster switched over to Mnemo to take on an identical post.

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