Caribou Biosciences, a US-based developer of cell engineering technology has closed an $11m series A round featuring pharmaceutical firm Novartis.
The round also included Fidelity Biosciences, a subsidiary of asset manager Fidelity Investments, venture capital firms Mission Bay Capital and 5 Prime Ventures, and an additional, undisclosed strategic partner.
Caribou’s CRISPR-Cas9 technology, based on research conducted at the Doudna Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, will be used in precision cellular engineering and analysis.
The company has also signed a collaboration agreement with Novartis Institutes through which they will use Caribou’s platform to research new CRISPR-based drug target screening and validation technologies.
Rachel Haurwitz, chief executive of Caribou, said: “This funding will allow us to further accelerate deployment of our advanced genome editing platform, which enables simple, flexible targeting of any site in a given genome, in a number of focus areas including therapeutic research and development, agricultural biotechnology and industrial biotechnology.”