Singapore's Tikva Allocell raises $8M to advance solid-tumour cell therapy
What's the deal? Tikva Allocell, a Singapore-based biotech developing donor-derived cell therapies for solid tumours, has closed an $8 million Series A round led by Kantharos Capital. The money will fund preclinical work and a planned year-end 2026 filing for its lead candidate, TAVST01.
Why now? The round funds completion of IND-enabling activities ahead of a planned Investigational New Drug (IND) submission for TAVST01, targeting B7-H3-positive solid tumours. Pending regulatory clearance, Tikva plans a Phase 1 trial at sites in Singapore and the US.
What's the endgame? TAVST01 targets B7-H3, a protein found across hard-to-treat cancers including lung, breast, prostate, pancreatic, and pediatric tumours. It is built from Epstein-Barr virus-specific T cells and engineered to resist the immune rejection that clears most donor-derived therapies before they work.
The technology rests on the ALLO SerpinB9 EBVST platform, licensed exclusively from Baylor College of Medicine and enhanced with Tikva's own protein engineering. The cells carry a B7-H3-targeting receptor and an optimised form of SerpinB9, which shields them as they attack tumours.
What could go wrong? The candidate remains preclinical. Its promise to both kill tumour cells and remodel the immunosuppressive environment around solid tumours — a barrier that has long limited cell therapies — is unproven in humans and hinges on regulatory clearance to start trials.
The signal: At $8 million, the round sits near the smaller end of Series A financings, placing it in roughly the 17th percentile by size. That reflects the capital-lean path many Asian biotech startups take to reach a first regulatory filing before seeking larger clinical-stage funding.
Read more: BioSpectrum Asia
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
