Funding profile · Cancer vaccines

Adventris Pharmaceuticals

A Y Combinator biotech with three peer reviewed phase 1 papers behind its lead asset and almost no capital record of its own. No Form D has ever been filed. The clinical evidence was paid for by the National Cancer Institute and two foundations, at the university that owns the patents.

$500KTotal funding on record, one round, one investor (Tracxn, aggregator)
0Form D filings naming Adventris in SEC EDGAR full text search
3Backers named anywhere on the record: Y Combinator, Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures, Refactor Capital
$0Federal grant dollars awarded to the company (NIH RePORTER, NSF)

Data as of September 23, 2026. Company-reported figures are labeled.

Rounds at a glance

When Round Amount Investors Source
Winter 2023 Y Combinator batch Not disclosed Y Combinator; partner listed as Tom Blomfield YC profile
2023 Seed $500,000 One institutional investor, not named Aggregator
Apr 2023 Investor listed Not disclosed Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures Aggregator
Dec 2024 Investor listed Not disclosed Refactor Capital Aggregator and portfolio page
By Oct 2025 Second seed, on SAFEs Not disclosed Not named; no investor took a board seat Founder interview
Ahead Series A Not raised None announced Founder interview

What the filings show

SEC EDGAR · full text search · run September 23, 2026

Query
Adventris, all form types
Result
0 filings
Query
Adventris, restricted to Form D
Result
0 filings
Control
The same endpoint, restricted to Form D, returns 2 filings for a comparable private company, so the method finds Form D notices when they exist
Reading
No Regulation D offering has been noticed to the SEC under this name
NIH RePORTER
0 projects for Adventris Pharmaceuticals
ClinicalTrials.gov
0 studies with Adventris as sponsor or collaborator

Reading the filings

  1. The absence of a Form D is informative, not an error.A Form D is due within 15 days of a first sale under Regulation D. None exists here. The founder’s own account explains why: every financing to date has been done on SAFEs rather than a priced round, and companies that raise under Section 4(a)(2) instead of Regulation D file nothing. The arithmetic follows: zero filings means zero disclosed offering amounts, zero disclosed investor counts and zero disclosed related persons.
  2. One capital number exists and it is small.Tracxn reports $500,000 across one round from one institutional investor, with a 2023 date. That is one check of accelerator size, not a syndicate. Divided across one investor it averages $500,000, which is the whole point: nothing here looks like an institutional round yet.
  3. The board has no investor on it.Herbach has said all funding was done on SAFEs, that no investor holds a board seat, that one investor who pushed on scientific strategy was refused and then did not join the next round, and that an independent biotech consultant was added to the board by choice. Board control is being priced above valuation. That is consistent with the empty EDGAR record: a priced round is what usually produces both a Form D and a board seat.
  4. The expensive part has been paid for by other people.Three phase 1 papers published in 2026 rest on trials sponsored by Johns Hopkins and funded by the National Cancer Institute, Stand Up To Cancer, the Lustgarten Foundation, Bristol Myers Squibb, Agenus and the Department of Defense. NIH RePORTER shows no award to the company itself. The company owns a license to the output, not the bill.
  5. The value sits in a license, not in filings.The Johns Hopkins release states plainly that “Adventris Pharmaceuticals has licensed a technology described in this study from the Johns Hopkins University,” and that four founders plus the university take royalty distributions. A co-founder’s journal disclosure adds that the related cancer vaccine patents are managed by Johns Hopkins. Terms, milestones and royalty rates are not public.
  6. The next raise is the expensive one.The company has said human trials are costly and that it is preparing an investigational new drug application, targeting first patient dosing in early 2027. A company-run phase 1 is the first thing on this record that Adventris would have to pay for itself.

Commercial signals

Signal Detail Source type
Product status mKRAS-VAX is investigational. No FDA-approved product, no company-sponsored trial registration, no IND on the public record. Public record
Asset origin Licensed from Johns Hopkins University; patents managed by Hopkins. Four founders and the university hold royalty rights. Public record
Clinical evidence Three phase 1 papers in 2026: prevention in 20 high-risk adults, resected pancreatic cancer in 12 patients, metastatic colorectal cancer in 13. All Hopkins-sponsored. Peer reviewed
Competition Elicio Therapeutics reported on June 15, 2026 that ELI-002 7P missed its primary disease-free survival endpoint in a randomized phase 2 of 144 patients. Independent
Headcount Eleven employees on LinkedIn in 2026, up from seven at the Y Combinator batch. Directory
Revenue None reported. A database listing $1.1M of revenue for this domain is not corroborated by any other record and is inconsistent with a preclinical biotech. Aggregator conflict

What to watch

  • A first Form D, which would be due within 15 days of the first sale of a priced round.
  • Whether a Series A brings an investor onto a board the founders have kept to themselves.
  • IND clearance and a company-sponsored trial registration, targeted by the company for early 2027.
  • Any disclosure of the Johns Hopkins license terms, including milestones and royalty rates.
  • Whether Adventris appears as a sponsor or collaborator on any Hopkins study.

The Adventris Pharmaceuticals story on Healthcare DiscoveryHealthcare Discovery

Related companies

  • Parallel Bio: Shared investor: Refactor. Miniature human lymph nodes, grown from donated tissue and run side by side across hundreds of donors, used to test drugs and vaccines before anyone takes them
  • 64x Bio: Shared investor: Refactor. A Harvard spinout that engineers the cells which manufacture viral vectors, rather than the therapies those vectors carry
  • Ophelia: Shared investor: Refactor. A telehealth medical practice treating opioid use disorder with medication and a care team
  • Enzyme: Shared investor: Refactor. Cloud quality management software built so small life science companies could survive an FDA inspection without hiring a consulting firm

Sources

  1. Public recordSEC EDGAR full text search for Adventris, all forms and Form DSEC · Sep 23, 2026
  2. Public recordNIH RePORTER project search, Adventris PharmaceuticalsNIH · Sep 23, 2026
  3. Public recordClinicalTrials.gov records NCT05013216, NCT04117087, NCT06411691, NCT06782932ClinicalTrials.gov · Sep 2026
  4. Public recordExperimental KRAS vaccine generates immune response in high-risk peopleJohns Hopkins Medicine · Jul 16, 2026
  5. Public recordMutant KRAS vaccine with checkpoint blockade in resected pancreatic cancerNature Communications · Feb 10, 2026
  6. Public recordAdventris company listingJohns Hopkins Technology Ventures · Sep 2026
  7. DirectoryAdventris profile, funding and teamTracxn · Sep 2026
  8. DirectoryAdventris investor list, Y Combinator, Johns Hopkins, Refactor CapitalParsers VC · Sep 2026
  9. DirectoryRefactor Capital portfoliof4.fund · Sep 2026
  10. Podcast summaryFounder Mode: Jen Herbach, CEO, AdventrisThe Social Radars, via PodCosmos · Oct 7, 2025
  11. IndependentElicio phase 2 AMPLIFY-7P results and phase 3 strategyElicio Therapeutics · Jun 15, 2026
  12. CompanyAdventris company and launch pagesY Combinator · Winter 2023

Compiled from SEC, NIH, ClinicalTrials.gov and other public records and published reports as of September 23, 2026. Form D notices report offerings under Regulation D; the absence of one does not mean no capital was raised, since offerings under Section 4(a)(2) require no such notice. Healthcare Venture Capital Fund holds no position in Adventris Pharmaceuticals. This page is not an offer to sell or a recommendation to buy any security.