Colorectal cancer patients whose disease exhibits certain rare genetic signatures have the option of treatment with immunotherapies. But these targeted cancer treatments haven’t worked for patients with the two subtypes that represent the majority of colorectal cancer cases. The technologies of Cartography Biosciences enables its scientists to find their way to the right targets for cancers, and the startup now has $67 million to advance an internally discovered colorectal cancer therapy to its first test in humans.
South San Francisco-based Cartography turns data into drugs. The company’s platform technology, Atlas, analyzes two datasets, one with every cell in a healthy human body and the other containing targets specifically expressed on every cancer cell. Artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques power analysis of the datasets, enabling Cartography’s scientists to identify promising drug targets found on cancer cells but not on healthy ones. A second technology platform, Summit, identifies the target pairs that enable the company to develop drugs that bind to two targets.
Lead Cartography program CBI-1214 is a T-cell engager, a bispecific antibody designed to bind to two targets, one on a cancer cell and the other on an immune cell. Binding to both brings the two cells together, prompting the immune cell to kill the cancer cell. The cancer target of Cartography’s drug is LY6G6D, an antigen that’s abundant in the microsatellite stable and microsatellite instability-low subtypes, representing the majority of colorectal cancer patients.
According to Cartography, CBI-1214 is engineered with features specifically designed to optimize anti-tumor activity. Cartography presented preclinical data last year during the annual meeting of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer.
“Combining insights from thousands of patient tissue samples, our Atlas and Summit platforms have identified several novel targets and target pairs that we have engineered new T-cell engagers against,” Cartography CEO Kevin Parker said in a prepared statement. “CBI-1214, our first announced program, has the potential to be a first- and best-in-class molecule targeting [colorectal cancer] and positions Cartography as an emerging leader in new targeted therapies.”
Cartography plans to file an investigational new drug application for CBI-1214 later this year and begin trial enrollment in early 2026. This study will enable the startup to keep pace with QLSF Biotherapeutics, another South San Francisco-based biotech whose pipeline lists an LY6GCD-targeting T-cell engager in Phase 1 testing for colorectal cancer. Preclinical results for QLFS’s drug were presented during the 2024 annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. Roche was in the hunt with its own T-cell engager targeting LY6G6D but removed the candidate from its pipeline last year.
Cartography’s science has led to one partnership to date. Last year, Gilead Sciences paid $20 million up front to kick off an alliance focused on discovering and developing therapies for triple-negative breast cancer and adenocarcinoma, which is the most common form of non-small cell lung cancer. If Gilead opts in to the targets identified from the collaboration, it will be responsible for advancing them through further development. Cartography’s pipeline shows both programs are in the discovery stage. Two additional Cartography programs are in preclinical development for solid tumors.
Cartography launched in 2022 backed by $57 million in financing. The new financing announced Thursday, a Series B round, was led by new investor Pfizer Ventures. Other new investors include LG Corp, Amgen Ventures, Finchley H.V., Global BioAccess Fund, and Lotte Holdings CVC. They were joined by earlier investors Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Bio + Health, 8VC, Wing Venture Capital, Catalio Capital Management, AME Cloud Ventures, ARTIS Ventures, and Gaingels. With the latest financing, Michael Baran, a partner at Pfizer Ventures, has joined Cartography’s board of directors.
Illustration: Sebastian Kaulitzki/Science Photo Library, via Getty Images
