Inscripta, a US-based genome engineering platform developer backed by medical technology holding company Institut Mérieux, collected $125m yesterday in a series D round led by venture capital firm Paladin Capital Group.
Investment firm JS Capital Management and growth equity fund Oak HC/FT also took part in the round, along with unnamed existing shareholders.
Founded in 2015 as Muse Biotechnology, Inscripta has built a fully automated gene editing platform dubbed Onyx Digital Genome Engineering, which enables researchers to build libraries of millions of engineered cells in a single experiment.
The benchtop platform includes software, assays, specialised enzymes and reagents. It is aimed at areas such as healthcare, genome discovery and bioindustrial materials development and manufacturing.
The cash injection will accelerate the commercialisation of Onyx and an expansion of its applications. It increased Inscripta’s total equity financing to nearly $260m.
The company closed its $106m series C round in April this year after receiving $20m in a third tranche backed by Mérieux Développement, the investment vehicle of Institut Mérieux, in addition to Paladin Capital, Venrock, Foresite, MLS Capital and NanoDimension.
Mérieux Développement and existing investors Paladin Capital, Venrock, Foresite, MLS Capital and NanoDimension also contributed to the round’s $80.5m second close in December 2018, after the same consortium had provided an initial $55.5m nine months earlier.
Kevin Ness, Inscripta’s CEO, said: “The overwhelming interest we received with the recent launch of our Onyx platform along with this significant funding offer tremendous validation of our novel approach to genome engineering and its power to unlock the full potential of the emerging bioeconomy.
“We are excited to see that by overcoming the limitations of existing Crispr-based gene editing, our digital genome engineering tools are already having a significant impact by enabling researchers to design experiments that were previously impossible.
“The new funding provides us with the resources to ramp up faster to meet the anticipated high demand for our platform.”
