Quell Therapeutics

Background

Founded in 2019, Quell Therapeutics is a leader in engineered T-regulatory (Treg) cell therapies for medical conditions driven by abnormal immune responses. 

The most common cases are autoimmune diseases – which affect around one in ten (6.7m) people in the UK – such as type 1 diabetes or multiple sclerosis, where the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissues. However, it can also occur in organ transplants when the body’s immune response rejects the donated organ, which can prove fatal for patients and require expensive lifelong immune suppressing treatment.

Quell Therapeutics’ Treg therapy aims to target specific overactive immune responses, providing long-lasting disease control without suppressing the entire immune system. This could improve outcomes for individuals affected by autoimmune diseases by helping them to manage their conditions. It could also reduce the risk of transplant rejection and the need for lifelong immunosuppression drugs; improving patients’ overall quality of life and significantly reducing healthcare costs.  

Headquartered in London, UK, Quell Therapeutics is now at the forefront of cell therapy. It entered strategic collaboration with AstraZeneca in 2023.

Support from the Bank

In 2021, the British Business Bank invested £5.5m directly into Quell Therapeutics as part of its $156m Series B funding round alongside leading investors including Fidelity Management, SV Health Investors, Jeito Capital, Ridgeback Capital and founding investor, Syncona  The capital was allocated to advance its platform technology and capabilities and fund a clinical trial of its leading product for liver transplantation, QEL-001.

The British Business Bank also supported Quell through its fund commitments to SV Health Investors’. The Bank made a $65 million commitment to SV7 Impact Medicine Fund in July 2020 and a $67 million commitment to SV Biotech Crossover Opportunities Fund in January 2022, both of which made investments into Quell Therapeutics. 

Outcomes and Growth 

These investments helped the company to scale its manufacturing and development of its clinical and preclinical programs and build its state-of-the-art facilities; positioning Quell as a leader in cell therapy innovation with a team of over 140 people.

Since the bank’s investment, the company has broadened to four clinical / peri-clinical programs in liver transplantation, in complex rheumatic diseases, type 1 diabetes and inflammatory bowel disease.

Quells’ most advanced candidate, QEL-001 in Liver transplantation, is advancing through its LIBERATE Ph I/II clinical trial. The company has successfully dosed 9 patients in total and is progressing towards an initial efficacy readout. 

In addition, the company has also been able to demonstrate preclinical data supporting potential applications of its QEL-005 product in a broader range of immune-mediated diseases such as Rheumatoid Arthritis and Scleroderma which will be filed with the regulators in Q4 2025 and will enter the clinic in H1 2026. QEL-005 has the potential to be a broad pipeline-in-a-product in that it has the opportunity to treat numerous inflammatory conditions. 

Recognising the potential of the company’s proprietary toolbox and the potential applications, global biopharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca established a strategic partnership with Quell in 2023. Under the terms of the agreement, Quell received an initial upfront payment of $85 million to develop engineered T-regulatory cell therapies for type 1 diabetes and inflammatory bowel disease. 

Both programs have reached significant milestones, triggering an option exercise payment of $10m each to progress the candidates into clinical development. Quell is also eligible to receive over $2 billion for further development and commercialisation milestones, if successful, plus tiered royalties.