The diagnosis of a serious medical condition is often a shock to the individual and their family, friends and others that they feel comfortable sharing such news with. If that diagnosis is a form of leukemia or other cancer, it can be crushing. Often there are feelings of despair. Anger. Desperation. Heartache. Tears. Longing for answers and for more time, That is the mission of Taran - to help people get more time with those that they love and who love them. We especially feel the strong need to speak for those who have no voice. We do not tire of working long hours, making personal sacrifices and being relentless in overcoming the multiple and sometime surprising obstacles that get in the way of delivering our mission. Such difficulties become our rocket fuel.
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Our Story and the Taran Name...
In February 2024, Taran Therapeutics, a private Delaware C-corp, acquired the assets of Humanigen, Inc., A NASDAQ-listed company, in a 363 chapter 11 sale overseen by Judge Brendon Shannon (Delaware).
From 2000 until 2017, the company had been established as 'KaloBios' and pursued development of lenzilumab (LENZ), a monoclonal antibody, as a therapy for rheumatoid arthritis, asthma and CMML. Ifabotuzumab (IFAB) had been developed as a therapy for solid tumors and certain leukemias. Following subsequent leadership change, the company renamed as 'Humanigen', developed LENZ as a companion therapy to CAR-T and conducted clinical work in partnership with Kite/Gilead, which showed promising potential benefit with the combination of LENZ to ameliorate some of the potential side-effects of CAR-T, and enhance durability. IFAB showed promising Phase 1 data in Glioblastoma Multiforme, a brain cancer, and published these promising findings.
With the global COVID pandemic, Humanigen pivoted to testing LENZ in Phase 3 studies for the treatment for hospitalized COVID pneumonia patients. Despite promising data from two trials in COVID, each with more than 500 patients and including one trial entirely funded and managed by the NIH, LENZ did not receive Emergency Use Authorization in COVID and Humanigen could not continue as a going concern.
Taran now owns all rights to the former KaloBios/Humanigen products, including LENZ and IFAB, promising monoclonal antibodies with clinical data, including, in the case of LENZ a Phase 2/3 clinical trial. It is anticipated that a single confirmatory Phase 3 trial may, if successful, lead to an approval in one or more countries for LENZ. IFAB shows potential promise as part of unique Antibody-Drug Conjugates (ADCs) used for the treatment of solid tumors and several ADCs have been manufactured and animal testing has been completed.
Thanks to the investments already made under the prior ownership, LENZ now has a well-established dosing and an excellent safety and tolerability profile that come s from dosing in almost 1000 patients over many years, multiple indications, countries and disease conditions.
In addition, extensive Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Controls (CMC) work has been completed and inventory manufactured. The complete CMC package was submitted to FDA as part of the COVID EUA.
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The Founder’s wife, a proudly Welsh woman, bred a beautiful male Welsh cob foal. He was born during a thunderstorm. The Welsh word for thunder is Taran and so she named him Taran.
The choice of Taran for the company name honors her memory, the tragic loss of an extraordinary woman, as well as the beauty, pride and strength of the Welsh people and language and the physical and mythical power of thunder as an unstoppable force - just as the horse turned out to be, as she was and as the company intends to be.