Cancer vaccine startup launches with $54 million, Spark veteran as CEO

A new startup focused on creating vaccines for cancers, influenza, and potentially even HIV launched Thursday with $54 million in funding.

Corner Therapeutics’ Series A round was led by Ziff Capital Partners, a little-known family office started by billionaire Dirk Ziff. The biotech is also being led by Spark Therapeutics co-founder Steven Altschuler, who joined Ziff Capital in 2018 as its managing director of health care ventures.

Altschuler and Ziff’s relationship goes back to the mid-2010s, when Altschuler was chief executive of the well-known research hospital Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, or CHOP. Ziff, who is one of the heirs to the Ziff Davis publishing fortune, was sitting on CHOP’s board of trustees.