UCLA-partnered company emerges from stealth

TORL BioTherapeutics has publicly launched after raising $158 million in a series B financing round. The company aims to treat cancer with its pipeline of antibody-drug conjugates and monoclonal antibodies. Its lead clinical assets target claudins, the family of proteins that sit at the junction of cell-cell contact and help control the permeability of epithelial barriers. One of TORL’s cofounders is University of California, Los Angeles, oncologist Dennis Slamon, who in the 1980s identified a HER2 gene mutation that was common in an aggressive form of breast cancer.