CREATE Medicines raises $122M to advance in vivo CAR therapy

What’s the deal? CREATE Medicines, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based clinical-stage biotech, has closed a $122M Series B round co-led by existing investors Newpath PartnersDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, ARCH Venture Partners, and Hatteras Venture Partners, with participation from Alexandria Venture InvestmentsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →.

The company was formerly known as Myeloid Therapeutics. Ron Philip, a veteran biopharma executive, has joined as executive chairman, and two new board members have been appointed from the lead investors.

CREATE is developing in vivo CAR therapies — treatments that reprogram immune cells directly inside the patient’s body using its proprietary mRNA-LNP platform, rather than extracting, engineering, and reinfusing cells as conventional CAR-T therapies require.

The platform targets T cells, NK cells, and myeloid cells simultaneously, enabling repeat dosing and off-the-shelf delivery. CREATE has now dosed more than 50 patients across its in vivo CAR clinical programmes — the largest clinical dataset in the field.

Why now? In vivo cell therapy for autoimmune disease is one of the hottest areas in biopharma. Conventional CAR-T approaches have shown dramatic results in refractory autoimmune conditions — including what appear to be deep, durable remissions in lupus and other severe cases — but they require complex, expensive, personalised manufacturing.

CREATE’s in vivo approach, if validated, could dramatically simplify delivery and reduce cost. Its lead autoimmune programme, CRT-402, has shown deep and durable B cell depletion in non-human primates, with the repeat-dosing flexibility that conventional CAR-T cannot offer.

In oncology, early clinical data from its MT-303 programme in frontline liver cancer has shown what the company describes as a compelling early response profile.

What could go wrong? CREATE is still in early clinical development — the 50-patient dataset spans multiple programmes and no pivotal trial data has been published. In vivo cell programming is scientifically ambitious and the field has not yet produced a commercially approved product.

The mRNA-LNP delivery platform, while validated in COVID-19 vaccines for simple applications, faces significant challenges in achieving the specificity needed to programme complex immune cell populations safely and effectively inside the body.

The autoimmune cell therapy space is also intensifying rapidly. Established CAR-T companies and well-funded new entrants are all pursuing similar indications, and CREATE will need to demonstrate clinical differentiation clearly to stand out.

The signal: The round’s structure — led by all three existing major investors increasing their commitment — is a strong signal of insider conviction in CREATE’s clinical trajectory. Newpath’s founder Tom Cahill was explicit: “More than fifty patients later, the science is still ahead of the field.” That kind of language from a co-founder-level investor backing a second major round reflects genuine belief that CREATE has built something durable, not just promising.

In vivo immune programming, if it works at scale, could reshape how autoimmune disease and cancer are treated — removing the logistical and cost barriers that have limited CAR-T therapy to the most severe cases.

Sources:
CREATE Medicines
STAT News
Fierce Biotech
CityBiz
CREATE Medicines, LinkedIn

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J.V.