US-based biotechnology developer Maze Therapeutics launched yesterday with $191m in funding provided by a consortium featuring GV, a corporate venturing subsidiary of internet and technology conglomerate Alphabet.
Alexandria Venture Investments, the investment arm of life science real estate trust Alexandria Real Estate Equities, also participated in the round co-led by Third Rock Ventures and Arch Venture Partners.
Foresite Capital, Casdin Capital and several undisclosed investors filled out the round.
Maze Therapeutics will focus on genetic modifiers – genes that affect the severity of a disease – and develop drugs that target such modifiers to treat disorders.
The company will use the funding to develop its platform and to advance three programs – a gene therapy for an unspecified neurodegenerative disease, a treatment for an undisclosed condition and a third asset “in a totally different therapeutic space”, Charles Homcy, founder and interim CEO of Maze told Fierce Biotech.
Maze hopes to advance the first two therapies into the clinic within two and a half years, and will use the funding to achieve this goal.
Maze’s five scientific co-founders include Mark Daly, a co-director of the program in medical and population genetics at Broad Institute; Stephen Elledge, the Gregor Mendel professor of genetics and medicine at Harvard Medical School; and Aaron Gitler, a professor of genetics at Stanford University.
They also include Sekar Kathiresan, director of the cardiovascular disease initiative at Broad Institute and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, as well as Jonathan Weissman, a professor and vice chair of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology at University of California, San Francisco.
Weissman said: “We are at a critical juncture in drug development where we now have a breadth of genetic information that gives us insights into the root causes of disease, as well as powerful tools that allow us to test and exploit these insights.
“Maze has been established at the perfect time to combine these elements, which we believe will lead to important discoveries and new treatments for patients.”
