Replay, Cleerly, Camp4
Replay Raises $55M in Seed Funding
Replay, a San Diego, CA and London, UK-based genome writing company reprogramming biology by writing and delivering big DNA, raised $55m in seed financing.
The round was led by KKR and OMX Ventures, with participation from ARTIS Ventures and Lansdowne Partners, SALT, DeciBio Ventures, and Axial.
Replay is a genome writing company, which has assembled a toolkit of platform technologies – including a high payload capacity HSV platform, a hypoimmunogenic platform, and a genome writing platform – to address the scientific challenges currently limiting clinical progress and preventing genomic medicine from realising its full potential. The company has, additionally, established an enzyme writing product company engaging its evolutionary inference machine learning and genome writing technology to optimize functionality.
Replay Raises $55M in Seed Funding
Replay, a San Diego, CA and London, UK-based genome writing company reprogramming biology by writing and delivering big DNA, raised $55m in seed financing
Cleerly Closes $192M Series C Funding Round
Cleerly, a NYC-based heart disease care company, closed a Series C financing round of $192m.
This round, which brought the total raised by the health care company to $248m, was led by funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. and T. Rowe Price Investment Management, Inc., and Fidelity Management and Research Company, which were joined by additional investors including Sands Capital, Piper Sandler’s Merchant Banking and Heartland Healthcare Capital funds, Mirae Asset Capital, Peter Thiel, Breyer Capital, and Novartis, as well as existing investors Vensana Capital, LRVHealth, New Leaf Ventures, Cigna Ventures and DigiTx Partners.
The company intends to use the funds to expand its team, extend its commercial reach to broaden patient and physician access to its comprehensive technology-enabled care pathway across the entire continuum of disease presentation—from early diagnosis of heart disease to ensuring that ongoing treatments are effective for those who have that elevated risk or symptoms, and invest in additional large-scale outcomes research. Cleerly has more than a dozen ongoing multicenter clinical trials, including an international registry enrolling more than 100,000 patients over the next decade – making it the largest cardiovascular phenotype outcomes study ever performed.
Led by James Min, MD, FACC, FESC, MSCCT, CEO and founder, Cleerly leverages FDA-cleared, value-based diagnostic solutions driven by machine intelligence to enable comprehensive phenotyping of coronary artery disease, as determined from advanced non-invasive CT imaging. Its AI-enabled approach to evaluating coronary computed tomography (CT) angiograms allows physicians to easily identify, characterize and qualify atherosclerosis (plaque) build-up in the walls of the heart arteries. This information promotes an accurate understanding of a patient’s risk of heart attack and represents a marked shift from the way that heart disease has been historically assessed using indirect surrogate markers of disease.
Cleerly Closes $192M Series C Funding Round
Cleerly, a NYC-based heart disease care company, closed a Series C financing round of $192m
Camp4 Raises $100M in Series B Financing
CAMP4 Therapeutics, a Cambridge, MA-based biotechnology company harnessing the power of RNA to restore healthy protein expression, closed a $100m Series B funding round.
The round was led by Enavate Sciences, a portfolio company created by Patient Square Capital, with participation from a large national managed care organization and the Gaingels, an LGBTQIA+/Allies investment syndicate supporting diversity in venture capital, along with other unnamed investors, as well as existing investors 5AM Ventures, Polaris Partners, Northpond Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, The Kraft Group, and others. In conjunction with the financing, James Boylan, Chief Executive Officer of Enavate Sciences, will join CAMP4’s Board of Directors.
The company intends to use the funds to advance its lead regRNA programs and accelerate the expansion its regRNA Actuating Platform.
Led by Josh Mandel-Brehm, CEO, CAMP4 is pioneering a novel approach to programmable therapeutics. The company’s approach targets regulatory RNAs (“regRNAs”), considered to be part of the “Dark Side of the Genome,” the 98% of our genome that does not encode proteins. Through breakthroughs in molecular biology, it is now known that regRNAs control the expression of nearby protein-encoding genes. CAMP4’s RNA Actuating Platform (RAP™) maps regRNAs associated with every protein-coding gene in any cell type, and its programmable antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) therapeutics target the controlling regRNAs to upregulate gene expression to treat disease. This approach is applicable to a range of genetic diseases in which tunable increases in gene output can lead to meaningful therapeutic outcomes. While the company is initially focusing on treating diseases of the central nervous system and liver, its platform has the potential to address a broad range of genetic indications across multiple tissues, with a focus on haploinsufficient diseases.
Camp4 Raises $100M in Series B Financing
CAMP4 Therapeutics, a Cambridge, MA-based biotechnology company harnessing the power of RNA to restore healthy protein expression, closed a $100m Series B funding round
BigHat Biosciences Raises USD75M Series B Funding Round
BigHat Biosciences, a San Mateo, CA-based biotechnology company developing antibody therapies for patients using machine learning and synthetic biology, raised a $75m Series B funding round.
The round, which brings total funding to date to $100m, was led by Section 32, with participation from new investors Amgen Ventures, Bristol Myers Squibb, Quadrille Capital, Gaingels, GRIDS Capital,as well as prior investors Andreessen Horowitz, 8VC, and AME Cloud Ventures. In conjunction with the funding, Steve Kafka, PhD, Managing Partner of Section 32, joined BigHat ‘s Board. Longtime Alphabet executive and Section 32 Managing Partner, Andy Harrison, co-led this Series B financing and will join as a Board Observer.
The company intends to use the funds to scale the capacity of MillinerTM, an integrated AI/ML- wet lab platform, advance therapeutic programs toward human clinical trials, hire drug discovery and development talent and to accelerate strategic collaborations with flagship partners.
Founded in 2019 by CEO Mark DePristo, a University of Cambridge biochemistry Ph.D., former Head of Genomics for Google.AI, and Co-director of Medical Genetics at Broad Institute, with CSO Peyton Greenside, a Stanford biomedical informatics Ph.D. and 2018 Schmidt Science Fellow, BigHat Biosciences leverages an AI-enabled antibody design platform, Milliner, to design antibody therapies to treat some of the world’s most intractable conditions, from chronic illnesses to life-threatening diseases. At BigHat, every therapeutic program starts with a design blueprint and antibodies generated in its discovery engine or supplied by a partner. These initial molecules are then iteratively transformed into therapies on the Milliner platform through sequential design-build-test cycles. BigHat’s machine learning models design hundreds of variants that are built and tested in its lab using the latest synthetic biology technologies in each cycle. These measurements include biophysical properties and impact on disease activity for every variant using cell-based or other functional assays that replicate in vivo disease processes. This new data is used to update the AI/ML models so that over multiple cycles, these models learn to create antibodies that match our design blueprint.
BigHat has active therapeutic programs spanning multiple domains of human health, including inflammation, oncology, and infectious diseases in preclinical studies.
BigHat Biosciences Raises USD75M Series B Funding Round
BigHat Biosciences, a San Mateo, CA-based biotechnology company developing antibody therapies for patients using machine learning and synthetic biology, raised a $75m Series B funding round
Frontera Therapeutics Closes $160M Series B Financing
Frontera Therapeutics, a Bedford, MA and Suzhou, China-based clinical-stage biotechnology company that seeks to develop novel and best-in-class gene therapy medicines to improve the lives of patients across multiple disease areas, closed a $160m Series B funding round.
Backers included Boyu Capital, Sequoia China, OrbiMed, Creacion Ventures, and other investors.
In addition, the company announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted the company’s Investigational New Drug (IND) application to initiate a first-in-human clinical trial of FT-001, a gene therapy candidate for the treatment of patients with a rare genetic retinal disease that leads to severe vision loss.
Led by Yong Dai, Ph.D., founder and CEO, Frontera Therapeutics is a global, fully-integrated, clinical-stage biotechnology company leveraging its novel APEX Technology & Manufacturing platform to develop and manufacture gene therapy candidates across multiple disease areas. The platform is an innovative adeno-associated virus (AAV) gene expression system that aims to optimize both new and clinically validated AAV vectors to enhance the safety and efficacy profiles of gene therapy products. The in-house GMP manufacturing capabilities enables rapid production across the product lifecycle, and efficiently advance AAV therapies from research to clinical development. Frontera’s development pipeline spans not only orphan diseases, but also larger patient markets – including ophthalmology, hematology, neurology and metabolic diseases.
Frontera Therapeutics Closes $160M Series B Financing
Frontera Therapeutics, a Bedford, MA and Suzhou, China-based clinical-stage biotechnology company that seeks to develop novel and best-in-class gene therapy medicines to improve the lives of patients across multiple disease areas, closed a $160m Series B funding round
ForSight Robotics Raises $55M in Series A Funding
ForSight Robotics, a Yokneam, Israel-based pioneer in ophthalmic robotic surgery, completed a $55m Series A funding round.
The Adani Group led the funding round alongside existing investors Eclipse Ventures and Mithril Capital. A number of new investors, including Provenio Capital, Precision Capital, Reiya Ventures, the Ljungstrom family office, and other prominent private investors also joined the round.
The funding will be used to accelerate the development of the ForSight’s ORYOM platform in clinical trials.
Led by Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Dr. Daniel Glozman and Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer Dr. Joseph Nathan, ForSight Robotics is developing Oryom, a hybrid intraocular robotic ophthalmic platform, to advance ophthalmic surgery to treat a wide range of conditions including cataract, glaucoma, and other retinal diseases.
ForSight Robotics Raises $55M in Series A Funding
ForSight Robotics, a Yokneam, Israel-based pioneer in ophthalmic robotic surgery, completed a $55m Series A funding round
SHS Launches Sixth Fund; First Close at More Than €220M
SHS Gesellschaft für Beteiligungsmanagement, a Tübingen, Germany-based healthcare growth equity firm, received capital commitments of over 220 million euros for its sixth fund at the first closing.
More than 60 investors are already invested in the SHS VI Fund. These investors come from the areas of funds-of-funds, insurance companies, pension funds, foundations, family offices, banks, healthcare groups, church investors and entrepreneurs. The largest investors include, for example, the European Investment Fund, the Scandinavian foundation Realdania, the Swiss Helsana HealthInvest, the L-Bank Baden-Württemberg and larger family offices. Furthermore, the SHS investment team itself has invested significantly.
Investors can still participate in SHS VI until the final closing.
Led by Hubertus Leonhardt, partner and managing director responsible for fundraising, and Uwe Steinbacher, Managing Partner, the fund aims to make majority and minority investments in the healthcare sector. A total of 12-15 investments are planned. It focuses on corporate transactions of up to € 250 million. The fund can refinance the corresponding equity tranches with up to € 50 million from its own resources. In the case of higher equity requirements, SHS increases the volumes by co-investments from investors invested in the fund or syndicates with cooperating private equity houses. Expansion and innovation financing, succession situations and shareholder changes represent the focus of the investments sought.
