LTZ Therapeutics, a clinical-stage immunotherapy company headquartered in Redwood City, California, has closed an oversubscribed USD 38 million financing round to advance its Universal Myeloid Cell Engager (U-MCE) platform, bringing total funding to approximately USD 130 million since the company's founding in 2022.
GL Ventures led the round, with participation from an unnamed sovereign wealth fund and existing shareholders. The company said proceeds will support the ongoing Phase I study of its lead candidate LTZ-301 in relapsed/refractory non-Hodgkin lymphoma (nHL), as well as an investigational new drug filing and Phase I initiation for its second pipeline asset, LTZ-232. Prior financing includes a USD 17 million pre-Series A in April 2022 led by K2 Venture Partners, a pre-A+ round of over USD 10 million led by Qiming Venture Partners, and a Series A of over USD 20 million closed in July 2024 with Lapam Capital as lead investor.
LTZ-301 is a bispecific antibody designed to redirect monocytes and macrophages toward CD79b-positive B cells, triggering phagocytosis and depletion of malignant cells. CD79b is expressed in B-cell malignancies including those that have relapsed or become refractory to CD19- or CD20-directed therapies. The Phase I study of LTZ-301 is currently recruiting patients with relapsed/refractory nHL across multiple US clinical centers. LTZ-232 remains pre-IND, with no public disclosure of its target or indication beyond its classification within the myeloid engager pipeline.
The U-MCE platform is built on the premise that macrophages, which the company describes as among the most prevalent immune cell populations in the tumor microenvironment across hematologic and solid tumors, can be redirected from a pro-tumor to a tumoricidal state. LTZ characterizes its approach as grounded in reverse translational science, starting from clinical observations in human patients and working back into the laboratory to identify the underlying biology before designing therapeutics.