Allogenetics adds €3.8M for rejection-resistant donor lungs
Hanover-based Allogenetics has raised €3.8 million in a Pre-Series A round to advance ALG-115, an ex vivo gene therapy for donor lungs, through IND-enabling studies and toward a first-in-human trial planned for late 2027 or early 2028.
Why it matters: Instead of suppressing the transplant recipient’s immune system for life, Allogenetics is trying to make the donated organ harder for that immune system to recognize. That could tackle one of lung transplantation’s biggest limitations. Five-year survival remains about 59%, while recipients typically require chronic immunosuppression that leaves them vulnerable to infections, malignancies and other complications.
How it works: ALG-115 is administered to the donor lung while the organ is maintained outside the body using ex vivo perfusion. The approach reduces expression of MHC class I and II — called HLA in humans — which act as important recognition signals for immune cells.
- The underlying research used lentiviral vectors carrying short hairpin RNAs to turn down these molecules rather than completely eliminating them, which could otherwise make cells vulnerable to attack by natural killer cells.
The evidence: In a 2024 Science Translational Medicine study, seven minipigs received MHC-silenced lung grafts and seven received control grafts. Immunosuppression was stopped after four weeks.
- Five of seven animals receiving engineered lungs survived the full two-year monitoring period without rejection.
- All seven control animals rejected their grafts within three months.
- Allogenetics now says survival in its pig model has reached eight years without maintenance immunosuppression.
Reality check: The dataset is small and still preclinical. Jeffrey Platt, a University of Michigan transplant biologist not involved in the study, previously cautioned that the immune barrier in the minipig model was “lower than it would be for human-to-human transplants,” meaning the result may not directly predict human efficacy.
By the numbers: NBank Capital led the new round, joined by CARMA FUND, Life Science Valley Wachstumsfonds and undisclosed corporate and private investors. NBank and CARMA also co-led Allogenetics’ €3.4 million seed round in 2024, bringing the company’s publicly disclosed financing from the two rounds to €7.2 million.
Bottom line: For Allogenetics, the next test is whether the striking longevity seen in genetically engineered pig lungs can survive the much higher bar of human transplantation. The upcoming first-in-human trial will give us some answers.
