US-based gene therapy developer Locanabio received $100m on Monday in a series B round featuring UCB Ventures and GV, corporate venturing subsidiaries of pharmaceutical company UCB and internet technology group Alphabet.
Life sciences investment firm Vida Ventures led the round, which included RA Capital Management, Invus, Acuta Capital Partners, Temasek, Arch Venture Partners, Lightstone Ventures and an investment fund associated with healthcare investment bank SVB Leerink.
Founded in 2016 as Locana, Locanabio is developing ribonucleic acid (RNA)-targeting gene therapies to treat severe neurodegenerative, neuromuscular and retinal diseases.
Locanabio will use the funding to expand its technology platform and continue the development of therapeutic products which have no approved therapeutic alternatives.
In May 2019, the company raised $55m in a series A round led by Arch Venture Partners that also featured UCB Ventures, GV, Temasek and Lightstone Ventures. It secured a $550,000 grant from the Muscular Dystrophy Association the following month.
Locanabio CEO Jim Burns said: “This financing positions us to accelerate our efforts to advance multiple promising programmes into investigational new drug-enabling studies in 2021 and to further develop our novel RNA-targeting platform, which has the potential to be a major new advance in medicine that can bring hope to patients with many devastating genetic diseases.”