By Allison DeAngelis

May 14, 2026

Biotech Startups and Venture Capital Reporter

CREATE Medicines has a new name, an expanded pipeline, and now fresh funding to propel the company’s first CAR-T candidates through human trials.

Up until last year, CREATE was known as Myeloid Therapeutics. The startup was cofounded by noted writer and oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee to develop better CAR-T therapies using  a type of immune agent called myeloid cells, ideally to better attack solid tumors. The company rebranded last fall and, like many other oncology CAR-T companies, expanded into autoimmune disease research.

Now, CREATE has raised another $122 million from Newpath Partners, ARCH Venture Partners, Hatteras Venture Partners, and others, the biotech told STAT exclusively.

The Series B round means a “good step up” in CREATE’s valuation, CEO Daniel Getts said, and should sustain the company through its early clinical trials.

The company last raised money in 2023. Since then, many of the biotechs seen as part of CREATE’s cohort of new cell therapy companies have been snapped up by large drugmakers.

CREATE doesn’t feel that it’s been left in the dust; in fact, Getts is bullish that, in time, his company’s medicines will stand out. The chief executive often points out to his employees that Keytruda was not the first anti-PD-1 drug to hit the market, but it was ultimately the most effective treatment.

“We were surprised that CREATE seemed to fly under the radar as the first fully in vivo CAR company with patient data,” said Newpath founder Tom Cahill. “With a growing pipeline and impressive clinical data, we view CREATE as the most distinctive company in our portfolio.”

While CAR-Ts were once heralded for their resounding effects against blood cancers, the field has been marred by scientific and commercial challenges. This, along with surprisingly strong  data out of a German lab on the potential of using the approach in autoimmune diseases, has led some drug developers to pivot, retooling their cancer therapies into treatments for lupus or myasthenia gravis.

As Getts tells it, CREATE executives began considering their treatments in autoimmune conditions after seeing data from Capstan Therapeutics. Both companies are working on CAR-T that are generated directly inside of a patient’s body, instead of the onerous process in which a patient’s T-cells are removed and genetically engineered off-site. Getts felt there was room for improvement in Capstan’s and other companies’ early data.

“I think we know from what we’ve observed and what we’ve done, that we do have superior products, and I think… we’ll win the foot race, as well,” he said. Clay Thorp, cofounder of Hatteras Ventures, added that in preclinical testing, CREATE has shown some of the best ability to tamp down B-cells, which, in the case of autoimmune diseases, overreact and direct the immune system to harm health tissues.

Along with the financing, CREATE has recruited former Orbital Therapeutics CEO Ron Philip to lead its board of directors. Philip was with Orbital through its acquisition by Bristol Myers Squibb last year for $1.5 billion. The move to CREATE allows him to keep a hand in in vivo CAR-T drug development and the autoimmune disease field, he said, particularly as it moves through clinical trials. (Orbital had yet to start a clinical trial at the time of its acquisition.)

CREATE is currently testing two therapies for breast cancer and hepatocellular carcinoma in clinical trials. (The company shelved one of its initial experimental therapies for glioblastoma a couple of years ago, in order to use that money elsewhere.) It anticipates asking regulators for permission to begin a trial of its first autoimmune therapy in the next few months.