Spark co-founder, Harvard professor launch Watertown biotech with $54M

A new Watertown startup with veteran biotech leaders and scientists behind the wheel has emerged with $54 million in funding. 

Immunotherapy company Corner Therapeutics launched on Thursday with the goal of developing vaccines that provide lifelong protection from cancer and infectious diseases.

The company’s science builds on research from its scientific co-founder, Jonathan Kagan, who is a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.

Another well-known name in the biotech scene, Steven Altschuler, will lead Corner as its CEO. 

Altschuler co-founded Spark Therapeutics and served as its board chair from its founding through its acquisition by Roche in 2019. Altschuler was also the CEO of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) from 2000 to 2015. Spark is based in Philadelphia, though at one point had a Waltham office, and was started to develop and commercialize gene therapies being advanced at CHOP and other institutions. 

Altschuler is now a managing director of healthcare ventures at Ziff Capital Partners, which led the funding of Corner Therapeutics. Cockrell Interests, Tanis Ventures and Sandia Holdings also participated. 

“This funding will put rocket boosters under Corner’s pioneering work to achieve the holy grail of treatments: vaccines that provide lifelong protection from a virtually unlimited range of the most prevalent and lethal diseases,” Altschuler said in a statement. “We are now accelerating the development of our twin-engine platforms, with the vision of lifelong protection from cancer and infectious diseases.”

Corner says its technology teaches the immune system to build its own T cells, which are part of the immune system and fight diseases.

The company said that in preclinical models its approach has been inducing “robust and durable T cell and antibody production.” Corner plans to start its first clinical study next year.