{"entity":{"id":"captain-t-cell","kind":"company","name":"Captain T Cell","aka":[],"tldr":"Captain T Cell is a German company that engineers a patient's T cells with a receptor that recognises a protein called MAGE-A4 on some solid tumours, with extra changes meant to help the cells keep working inside a tumour. Its first product was heading into a first-in-human trial at German university hospitals in 2025.","summary":"Captain T Cell spun out of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in 2024 and is based in Schönefeld near Berlin. It raised a EUR 8.5 million seed round in May 2024 from i&i Biotech Fund I, Brandenburg Kapital and HIL-INVENT, with support from the German research ministry's GO-Bio programme, and in November 2025 closed a further equity round led by Springboard Health Angels and Pluton Asset Holding, bringing its total budget to EUR 20 million including grants. It joined the Bayer Co.Lab incubator in Berlin in June 2025.\n\nIts pipeline covers autologous and allogeneic (TCR-ALLO) TCR-T cell therapies for solid tumours. The lead candidate CTC127 is an autologous TCR-T recognising MAGE-A4 in patients carrying HLA-A1, with a toolbox of modifications aimed at the suppressive tumour microenvironment. It is to be tested in TOMATA, an investigator-initiated phase 1 first-in-human study led by Charité in nine German centres and funded by the National Center for Tumor Diseases, in MAGE-A4-positive lung, bladder, gastro-oesophageal, ovarian and head and neck cancers.","asOf":"2026-10-29","links":[{"label":"Official website","url":"https://www.captaintcell.com/"},{"label":"Max Delbrück Center: seed financing","url":"https://www.mdc-berlin.de/news/news/captain-t-cell-secures-seed-financing-round"},{"label":"Financing round, November 2025","url":"https://www.captaintcell.com/news/captain-t-cell-closes-financing-round-to-advance-tcr-t-pipeline-into-clinic"},{"label":"CTC127 heading to the clinic","url":"https://www.captaintcell.com/news/clinical-development-update"}],"tags":[],"related":[],"cancers":["nsclc","urothelial","gastric","ovarian","head-and-neck"],"sections":["cell-therapy","immunotherapy"],"technologies":["tcr-t","allogeneic-cell-therapy"],"targets":["mage-a4"],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":["Founding year not stated; the company says it spun out of the Max Delbrück Center in 2024. The TOMATA study had no registry identifier in the pages read. Cancers are linked to the tumour types the company names for the planned trial; the bladder cancer link uses the urothelial carcinoma record and the lung link the non-small cell lung cancer record, although the company says only lung cancer."],"hq":"Schoenefeld","country":"DE","companyType":"cell-therapy","website":"https://www.captaintcell.com/","stage":"startup","investors":[],"funding":[{"round":"Seed","year":2024,"source":"https://www.mdc-berlin.de/news/news/captain-t-cell-secures-seed-financing-round","note":"EUR 8.5 million seed from i&i Biotech Fund I, Brandenburg Kapital and HIL-INVENT; no USD figure given"},{"round":"Equity round","year":2025,"source":"https://www.captaintcell.com/news/captain-t-cell-closes-financing-round-to-advance-tcr-t-pipeline-into-clinic","note":"Led by Springboard Health Angels and Pluton Asset Holding; the company reports a total budget of EUR 20 million including grants, without stating the size of the round"}]},"route":"/companies/captain-t-cell/","neighbours":{"cancer":[{"id":"urothelial","kind":"cancer","name":"Bladder & urothelial cancer","route":"/cancers/urothelial/"},{"id":"gastric","kind":"cancer","name":"Gastric & gastro-oesophageal junction cancer","route":"/cancers/gastric/"},{"id":"head-and-neck","kind":"cancer","name":"Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma","route":"/cancers/head-and-neck/"},{"id":"nsclc","kind":"cancer","name":"Non-small-cell lung cancer","route":"/cancers/nsclc/"},{"id":"ovarian","kind":"cancer","name":"Ovarian cancer","route":"/cancers/ovarian/"}],"section":[{"id":"cell-therapy","kind":"section","name":"Cell Therapy","route":"/fronts/cell-therapy/"},{"id":"immunotherapy","kind":"section","name":"Immunotherapy","route":"/fronts/immunotherapy/"}],"technology":[{"id":"allogeneic-cell-therapy","kind":"technology","name":"Allogeneic (off-the-shelf) cell therapy","route":"/technologies/allogeneic-cell-therapy/"},{"id":"tcr-t","kind":"technology","name":"TCR-T cell therapy","route":"/technologies/tcr-t/"}],"target":[{"id":"mage-a4","kind":"target","name":"MAGE-A4","route":"/targets/mage-a4/"}]}}