ShennonBio, a pioneer in precision cancer therapies, enters next phase of growth with a new CEO and fresh capital

We’re excited to be part of a new $12 million financing round for Shennon Biotech­nolo­gies, whose ultra-high-throughput functional screening technology can sort through over 10 million T cell-target cell pairs in one experiment to see which T cells can best recognize and destroy tumor cells. The microflu­idics-driven platform works so quickly, and is so sensitive, that in just a few years the company has built a massive database of training data for AI models that can predict T cell-antigen binding, while also predicting which therapies might have off-target side effects. Along the way, ShennonBio has developed three new T‑cell Engager (TCE) programs to treat small cell lung cancer, ovarian cancer, and liver cancer.

The new financing will accelerate all of that work — as will the appointment of new CEO Dr. Cyril Konto, who has led oncology drug development programs at Ichnos Glenmark Innovation (IGI), Allogene Ther­a­peu­tics, Pfizer, and Bristol Myers Squibb. We see Dr. Konto’s hiring as a huge validation of the company’s technology platform and pipeline. It also rounds out the skill sets inside the company as it prepares for clinical trials and looks to collaborate with pharma companies and AI labs on target prediction and discovery. ShennonBio’s founding CEO, Dr. Li Sun, an applied physicist trained in microflu­idics with years of experience in deep tech venture capital, will stay on to become President and Chief Technology Officer. 

Discovering precision cancer immunother­a­pies is a needle-in-a-haystack problem. The body is home to hundreds of billions of T cells and B cells, but only a handful bear the surface receptors needed to recognize and kill a given tumor cell. Dr. Sun’s insight was that microflu­idics and machine learning could help researchers sort through T cells and protein binders at scale, to find the ones that bind to specific tumor antigens, alert the immune system, and release activating cytokines. 

In a single 20-minute run, the company’s platform can pair more than 10 million T cells with target cells alongside TCE binders. Each pair is encap­su­lated in a tiny droplet that also contains molecular linkers and fluorescent markers that glow in the presence of immune cytokines. The droplets that light up can be plucked out of the stream, and the binders are thus identified to develop effective TCEs for solid tumors — which make up 90 percent of all cancers but have been largely resistant to immunotherapy. The process is hundreds of times faster and at least 10 times more sensitive than competing screening platforms.

Through part­ner­ships with more than 15 medical research insti­tu­tions and hospitals, ShennonBio has built a proprietary dataset spanning 10,000+ tumor samples and more than 11 million single cells from cancer patients. The data can help build molecules that reliably turn a patient’s own immune system against tumor cells — such as the three TCEs in the company’s oncology pipeline (SBT-121, SBT-201, and SBT-425) — and also help optimize these molecules to bind to tumors more effectively and selectively, preventing off-target toxicity. 

The efficiency of ShennonBio’s microflu­idics platform — collecting far more cell-cell interaction data in far less time than previous tech­nolo­gies — is what makes the company special in immunotherapy. We think the datasets and predictive models the company is building will help other industry players advance drug development across all cancer types. And the same capa­bil­i­ties are already helping ShennonBio itself create unique drugs that go beyond the first generations of T‑cell engagers and T cell therapies to bring the promise of precision immunotherapy to cancer patients.