US-based RNA therapy developer Korro Bio completed a $91.5m a series A round yesterday featuring Alexandria Venture Investments, the venture capital arm of life sciences real estate investment trust Alexandria Real Estate Equities.
The round was led by investment fund Wu Capital and included Atlas Venture, New Enterprise Associates, Qiming Venture Partners USA, Surveyor Capital, Cormorant Asset Management and MP Healthcare Venture Management.
Korro is developing drugs using an RNA editing platform called Opera which leverages enzymes in the body to modify RNA coding and address disease-causing mutations, an approach dubbed adenosine deaminases acting on RNA (ADAR).
The company is targeting conditions affecting the liver, eye and central nervous system. Its ADAR technology emerged from research undertaken by Josen Rosenthal, a senior biologist at Marine Biological Library, a non-profit research institute affiliated to University of Chicago.
The series A funding will help progress Korro’s lead programme towards an investigational new drug filing and extend its portfolio of RNA-editing drug assets. It secured an amount from founding investor Atlas Venture in 2018 that a securities filing indicates may have been $4m.
Nessan Bermingham, co-founder and chairman of Korro Bio, said: “This technology holds tremendous potential to usher in a new era of RNA editing therapies. We are leveraging a natural cellular system that has evolved over millions of years to base edit RNA.
“By co-opting these endogenous enzymes, we can create highly targeted, titratable and reversible therapeutics that are straightforward to design, manufacture and deliver. We are grateful for the continued support of our existing investors and look forward to working with our new investors to advance a new generation of transformational therapies to the clinic.”
The original version of this article appeared on our sister site, Global University Venturing.