TFC Therapeutics, ARCH’s latest bet, emerges from Columbia professor who consulted on Biden’s cancer ‘moonshot’

TFC Therapeutics, a new ARCH Venture Partners biotech, on Thursday unveiled a mission to thwart the return of cancer and its spread to other parts of the body with new biologics.

The early-stage New York startup builds off four decades of cancer research out of Columbia University medical professor Azra Raza.

Azra Raza

TFC has the exclusive license to develop a drug discovery platform targeting tumor macrophage hybrid, or TMH, cells based on work out of Raza’s lab alongside principal scientist and assistant professor Abdullah Ali. Raza directs the MDS Center at Columbia and has led research on myelodysplastic syndrome, various leukemias and other cancers across a career spanning Rush University, the University of Massachusetts and elsewhere before moving to her current base in 2010.

CEO Jennifer Power and team hope that by eliminating TMH cells, they can help cancer patients who have relapsed on existing treatments or don’t respond to current interventions. The CEO said in an interview there’s been a clinical correlation, but no causation yet, that if TMH cells are found in blood, the prognosis is poor.

Over the next 18 to 24 months, TFC’s small team of scientists will filter blood from the samples of about 500 cancer patients and isolate the cells to characterize them and better understand the biology, said Power, who joined in April. After that exploration, TFC will look to a Series A, the CEO said, noting the goal is to start with a bispecific antibody.

For decades, Raza has been building a tissue repository that banks more than 60,000 samples from cancer patients. She’s well-connected in the field and consulted the Obama Administration and then-Vice President Joe Biden on the cancer “moonshot.” Her 2019 book “The First Cell” inspired the name of the new biotech startup. Power, a former advisor to Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and manager of the Big Pharma’s South Africa unit, likes to think of it as Tumor Fusion Cell Therapeutics, she said.

“This repository has helped my colleagues and me define the molecular and genetic milestones that must be covered for pre-leukemia cells to cross over into leukemia cells,” she wrote in an opinion piece in Stat in 2016. “It will also help us define potential therapeutic targets that could be used to intercept the disease before it is too late. This work will likely apply to the evolution of other cancers as well.”

Chairing the board is ARCH managing director Steven Gillis, who was connected to Raza via Tom Brennan, a long-time partner at the prolific VC firm whose career dates to early stints at Bell Labs. ARCH, the largest investor, had been prepared to fund TFC’s seed round on its own, Power said, but others wanted to join in on a “soft close” in May and an eventual sealing of the round this month.

The specific size of the round was kept under wraps, but Power noted such seed rounds are in the $10 million to $20 million range. Breakout Ventures, Alexandria Real Estate Equities and Alumni Ventures also invested.

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