Caribou Biosciences, a US-based gene-editing technology spinout of University of California (UC) Berkeley, closed a $115m series C round on Wednesday featuring pharmaceutical firm AbbVie and healthcare provider Heritage Medical Systems.
The round was co-led by Farallon Capital Management, PFM Health Sciences and Ridgeback Capital Investments, while AbbVie took part through its corporate venture capital unit, AbbVie Ventures.
Cancer charity Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Therapy Acceleration Program also invested, as did Adage Capital Partners, Avego Bioscience Capital, Avidity Partners, Invus, Janus Henderson Investors, LifeSci Venture Partners, Monashee Investment Management, Point72, Maverick Ventures, Pontifax AgTech and funds managed by Tekla Capital Management.
Founded in 2011, Caribou is working on off-the-shelf cellular immunotherapies for cancer using Crispr genome editing technology. It was co-founded by Jennifer Doudna, a professor of biochemistry, biophysics and structural biology at UC Berkeley, and her then- postdoctoral associate Martin Jinek, who is now an assistant professor at University of Zurich.
The company will use the series C funding to further develop its platform and advance ia pipeline of potential cancer treatments. PFM partner Santhosh Palani and Jeffrey Long-McGie, managing director at Ridgeback, will join its board of directors in connection with the round.
AbbVie Ventures’ investment follows the signing of a collaboration and licence agreement between its parent company and Caribou last month focusing on the research and development of two additional, unnamed CAR-T cell therapies.
Caribou last raised funding in 2016, when investment and financial services group Fidelity’s F-Prime Capital unit led a $30m series B round that included Heritage, pharmaceutical firm Novartis, Anterra Capital, Maverick, Mission Bay Capital, Pontifax Agtech and 5 Prime Ventures.
Novartis, Mission Bay, 5 Prime and F-Prime Capital (then known as Fidelity Biosciences) had already participated in the company’s $11m series A round the previous year.
The original version of this article appeared on our sister site, Global University Venturing.
