Juno wraps up a $176M A round as it hits the gas on its CAR-T contender

A week after the FDA lifted a clinical hold on a trial of its lead cancer candidate, startup Juno Therapeutics has closed its overstuffed $176 million Series A, drawing cash from Arch Venture Partners, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and others. The biotech burst on the scene in December with a $120 million first close and a promising immunotherapy, using chimeric antigen receptors to reprogram a patient's T cells and transform them into cancer-fighting agents. The treatment ran into a serious roadblock earlier this month when two patient deaths led the FDA to press pause on a trial at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, but investigators have since resumed their work, now avoiding subjects with heart disease and other comorbidities. More