US-based gene therapy company AuraSense Therapeutics raised an undisclosed amount in its series B round.
Investors included New York-listed drugs company Abbott Laboratories’ corporate venturing subsidiary, Abbott Biotech Ventures and angel investors Patrick Ryan, founder of insurer Aon, David Walt, co-founder of gene sequencer Illumina; Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, and Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft. Thirty-nine investors provided $2.5m in the initial equity round in December 2009, according to a regulatory filing.
AuraSense is developing spherical nucleic acid (SNA) constructs (see picture), which are gold nanoparticles conjugated to the human DNA or short interfering RNA, and was founded by Professors Chad Mirkin and Shad Thaxton at Northwestern University, which has licensed the intellectual property from the academic institution – see link for its case study.
Richard Holliday, director of technology at the World Gold Council, said: "We have had a number of conversations with Aurasense (a spin out by Prof Chad Mirkin at Northwestern University). The gold is used as the carrier for the RNA. Very clever stuff."
Schiff Hardin served as deal counsel to AuraSense Therapeutics.