US-based microbiome therapeutic developer Second Genome increased its series B round to $51m last week with an investment by corporate venturing unit SR One, illustrating the continued rise of genomic medicine in the startup space.
SR One, the corporate venture capital arm of pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline, added $8.4m to the $42.6m Second Genome raised in April this year, taking the company’s total funding to $67m.
The first tranche had come from Pfizer Venture Investments and Roche Venture Fund, the respective strategic investment units of pharmaceutical firms Pfizer and Roche, medical research firm Mayo Clinic, Digitalis Ventures, Adveq, LifeForce Capital, MBL Venture Capital, Advanced Technology Ventures, Morgenthaler Ventures, Seraph Group and Matthew Winkler.
Second Genome is using genomic technology as well as computational biology and phenotypic screening to identify and evaluate proteins, peptides and metabolites from the microbiome that influence disease. It is working on medicines for inflammatory bowel disease and metabolic disease, and has drugs that will address barrier function, insulin sensitivity and immune regulation in its pipeline.
The deal is just the latest in a string of large-sized deals closed by genomic medicine companies, partly due to the advances in the technology in recent times, and Second Genome extended the round in the same week as China-based iCarbonX, which is developing a healthcare data platform for individuals that will make use of genetic information, received $45m in funding from China Bridge Capital, adding to the $154m it closed in April from backers including Tencent and Vcanbio Cell & Gene Engineering.
Genomic medicine developer Syros Pharmaceuticals closed its initial public offering at $57.5m earlier this month, while gene editing company Editas Medicine raised $94m in its own IPO in February and peer Intellia followed suit with a $108m IPO in May.
The most notable advance in the sector however seems to have been the influence of Crispr/Cas9 gene editing technology. In addition to Intellia and Editas, the technology has been behind Crispr Therapeutics, which had raised $140m in series B funding as of last month, from backers including Bayer and Vertex Pharmaceuticals, while Caribou Biosciences secured $30m in its own series B round in May.
The interesting thing is that this wave of genomic medicine companies is still relatively new. Although Syros, Editas and Intellia have all gone public, all are around three years old or newer, and many of the participants in the space – including Helix, Poseida Therapeutics, Kallyope and Human Longevity, the latter of which has raised $290m in just over two years – are at series B stage or earlier.
The most active corporate participant in the sector has been gene biotech producer Illumina, which in April this year pledged $100m to a VC firm called Illumina Ventures that will invest in genomics startups, adding to the Illumina Accelerator initiative it launched in 2015 to help launch genomics technology developers.
In addition to its more precise funding programs, Illumina has been an increasingly active participant in individual rounds, taking part in late stage rounds for human genome researcher 23andme and synthetic DNA producer Twist Bioscience in the past year. It has also helped launch Human Longevity, Helix and gene sequencing technology developer Grail in the past two years, contributing to a combined $270m in series A funding for the three.
Second Genome’s technology is not as central to genomics as some of its competitors, but it is certainly part of the trend, and the enthusiasm of pharmaceutical investors to get on board indicates they will be joining the likes of Illumina and Alphabet – another frequent corporate investor in the subsector – more frequently in these rounds in future.