City Therapeutics' $135m debut, and other bio financing news

Our round-up of recent biotech financings features a strong first round for City Therapeutics, a new RNAi venture led by biotech doyen John Maraganore, and additional cash for Purespring, Judo Bio, GEMMABio, and Basecamp Research.

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based City Therapeutics emerged from the shadows with a $135 million Series A – led by ARCH Venture Partners – that will fund the development of a small interfering RNA (siRNA) drug discovery engine that the company thinks can deliver 'new-generation' drugs with improved potency and specificity, and which can be delivered to a wider range of tissue types.

Former Alnylam chief executive Maraganore, who will serve as executive chair of the new company, said his vision is that RNAi drugs will become "the next major category of high-impact medicines, rivalling if not exceeding the success of monoclonal antibodies." City expects to take its first candidate into the clinic around the end of next year.

Also participating in the round were Fidelity Management & Research Company, Invus, Slate Path Capital, Rock Springs Capital, Regeneron Ventures, and AN Ventures, amongst others.

Purespring Therapeutics raised £80 million ($105 million) in second-round financing that will help the London, UK-based company bring its PS-002 adeno-associated viral (AAV) gene therapy for kidney disease IgA nephropathy (IgAN) into phase 1/2 clinical testing. It follows a £45 million Series A that was completed in 2021.

The company focuses on complement-mediated kidney diseases and also has preclinical-stage programmes in nephrotic syndrome and an undisclosed glomerular kidney disease. It reported preclinical results with its AAV platform earlier this year, demonstrating its ability to deliver genes to podocytes, specialised epithelial cells in the kidney that are involved in regulating glomerular filtration.

The round was led by Sofinnova Partners, with Gilde Healthcare, Forbion, British Patient Capital, and founding investor Syncona also joining in.

Another new Cambridge, Massachusetts biotech – Atlas Venture-incubated Judo Bio – launched this week with $100 million in seed and Series A financing and a mission to develop oligonucleotide medicines for kidney diseases.

Judo has been formed around a drug discovery engine called STRIKE (Selectively Targeting RNA Into KidnEy) that generates ligand-RNA conjugate drugs designed to switch off disease-associated genes in the kidney. The company has also named biopharma industry veteran Rajiv Patni, formerly R&D head at Reata Pharma ahead of its acquisition by Biogen, as its chief executive.

The Series A was co-led by Atlas, TCG, and Droia Ventures, with participation from Digitalis Ventures, Euclidean Capital, Alexandria Venture Investments, YK Bioventures, and other undisclosed investors.

University of Pennsylvania spinout GEMMABio Therapeutics has secured up to $100 million in funding from Brazilian public health research institution the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) for an initiative that aims to bring gene therapy treatments to the people of Brazil.

Led by gene therapy pioneer Dr Jim Wilson – who stepped down from UPenn earlier this year to found GEMMABio and Franklin Biolabs – the company is focusing on research into rare diseases. The Brazilian project will focus on six programmes, targeting GM1 gangliosidosis (GM1), Krabbe disease, metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD), and three unnamed programmes.

The funding will be used to conduct clinical research and manufacturing and, in return, Fiocruz will be able to license related treatments to supply the Brazilian public health system.

Finally, UK artificial intelligence start-up Basecamp Research completed a $60 million Series B that will go toward "scaling the pace and volume" of data collection in support of its BaseFold database – used for applications like modelling small-molecule interactions with proteins – and adding to its AI capabilities.

The company also announced a multi-year collaboration with the laboratory of Dr David Liu at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University to develop new approaches to programmable genetic medicines.

The round was led by Singular, with additional investors including S32, redalpine, True Ventures, Hummingbird Ventures, and individual backers including Roche vice-chairman André Hoffmann, chair of Royal Philips and former CEO of DSM Feike Sijbesma, and Paul Polman, formerly CEO of Unilever. It takes the total raised by the London-based company to date to £85 million.

Photo by micheile henderson on Unsplash