Third Rock Ventures LLC plumbed its considerable network and assembled a team of prestigious cancer biologists and immunotherapy experts to form Jounce Therapeutics Inc., which launched Thursday with a $47 million Series A financing.

Based in Cambridge, Mass., the company will seek to discover and develop first-in-class cancer immunotherapies in a space that has drawn enormous interest since the FDA approvals of immune-stimulating targeted therapeutics Provenge (sipuleucel-T, Dendreon Inc.) and Yervoy (ipilimumab, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.).

Among Jounce's scientific co-founders is James Allison, chairman of the department of immunology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, whose research led to the clinical development of Yervoy, which was approved by the FDA in 2011 to treat metastatic melanoma. (See BioWorld Today, March 28, 2011.)

Others include Padmanee Sharma, associate professor in the department of genitourinary medical oncology at MD Anderson; Thomas Gajewski, professor in the departments of pathology and medicine at the University of Chicago; Drew Pardoll, professor and co-director of the cancer immunology and hematopoiesis program at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University; and Louis Weiner, director of the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and professor and chairman of the department of oncology at Georgetown University Medical Center.

Pardoll, who sits on the board of directors at Aduro BioTech Inc., of Berkeley, Calif., is an inventor of a number of immunotherapies, including GVAX cancer vaccines and Listeria monocytogenes-based cancer vaccines. He also had a hand in launching Johns Hopkins start-up Amplimmune Inc., of Rockville, Md., which in 2010 attracted a potential $485 million alliance with GlaxoSmithKline plc for AMP-224, an Fc-fusion protein of the B7-DC ligand that targets PD-1. (See BioWorld Today, Aug. 5, 2010.)

Meanwhile, Robert Schreiber, professor of pathology and immunology and professor of molecular microbiology at the Washington University School of Medicine, is serving as a special adviser to the company. Schreiber was the senior author of a seminal paper, published in 2001 in Nature, on the potential role of the immune system to induce a response against the development of tumors. (See BioWorld Today, May 2, 2001.)

"We consider this the dream team of cancer immunotherapy," said Cary Pfeffer, a partner at Third Rock and interim CEO of Jounce.

Yervoy's approval, in combination with news flow about candidates targeting PD-1, sparked internal conversations at Third Rock, according to Pfeffer. The life sciences venture firm viewed the drug as a turning point in treating patients with advanced metastatic cancer and providing them with "durable responses" – years of additional life, rather than weeks or months.

"We saw what was happening as the tip of the iceberg in the field," Pfeffer told BioWorld Today.

About 15 months ago, the venture firm invited Allison to meet with its scientific advisory board. Allison's vision of cancer immunotherapy "got people incredibly excited" and prompted the firm to explore the field more broadly, Pfeffer said.

Third Rock spent nearly a year assembling the team and developing a business plan for Jounce, which refers in physics to the fourth derivative of the position vector with respect to time – the others being velocity, acceleration and jerk – and in more common usage as a jolt, or dramatic change in direction.

"Both definitions, for us, signify dramatic shift," Pfeffer said. "We think immunotherapy, in general, and Jounce, in particular, are going after that dramatic shift in cancer therapy."

"We're trying to bring together biologics that can help mobilize the immune system by affecting a specific regulatory pathway that either enhances or limits T-cell activity," Allison added. "We're also trying to take a more global and concise look at what's going on in tumors. You can't just come up with one drug for all cancers. You have to pay attention to the details."

Jounce will explore multiple mechanisms of action and a broad spectrum of targets, primarily in solid tumors. Initially, the company will focus on tumor immunobiology, antibody discovery and optimization and integrated translational science, including in vivo tumor modeling.

"We're going to look at patient samples to help us develop our molecules, validate targets and understand patient selection," Pfeffer said. "It gives an opportunity to look very broadly at multiple approaches and find the next great drug in this field."

Although Pfeffer declined to discuss specific development timelines, he said Jounce "has the ability to advance multiple programs over the next few years."

Long term, the company will be opportunistic as the technology develops. Already, Jounce has attracted "incredible inbound interest" from big pharmas, according to Pfeffer.

"We're very well financed at the front end," he said. "If there's an opportunity to do the right partnership with the right partner at the right time, we're absolutely going to pursue that."

Before Provenge was approved in 2010, companies that had failed in late-stage trials with immunotherapies included Antigenics Inc., CancerVax Corp., Cell Genesys Inc., Favrille Inc., Genitope Corp., Progenics Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Therion Biologics Corp. (See BioWorld Today, April 30, 2010.)

Officials at Jounce are confident that corner has been turned.

"This is an exciting time for immunotherapy," Allison told BioWorld Today. "We're going to be able to develop some new drugs that will help a lot of patients, and that's what this business is all about."

In other financings news:

• BioLineRx Ltd., of Jerusalem, said it closed its direct placement OrbiMed Israel Partners Ltd. Partnership, an affiliate of OrbiMed Advisors LLC. The company received proceeds of approximately $8 million from the sale of 2,666,667 American Depositary Shares (ADSs), each representing 10 of its ordinary shares, and 1.6 million warrants to purchase an additional 1.6 million ADSs, at a unit price of $3. The warrants have an exercise price of $3.94 per warrant and are exercisable for a term of five years.

• Novelos Therapeutics Inc., of Madison, Wisc., said it priced a public offering of 11 million units at $0.50 per unit for gross proceeds of $5.5 million. Each unit consists of one share of common stock, a Class A warrant with a one-year term to purchase one-half of a share of common stock at an exercise price of $0.50 per share and a Class B Warrant with a five-year term to purchase one share of common stock at an exercise price of $0.50 per share. The transaction is expected to close on Feb. 19.