US-based gene-editing technology developer Prime Medicine emerged from stealth yesterday with $315m of series A and B funding from investors including GV, a corporate venturing subsidiary of internet and technology group Alphabet.
The company raised $115m in a series A round backed by GV, Arch Venture Partners, Newpath Partners and investment and financial services group Fidelity’s F-Prime Capital unit.
Prime Medicine concurrently unveiled a $200m series B round featuring all the series A investors in addition to Casdin Capital, Cormorant Asset Management, Moore Strategic Ventures, PSP Investments, Redmile Group, Samsara BioCapital, funds and accounts advised by T Rowe Price, and unspecified life science investment funds.
Founded in 2019, Prime Medicine has built a technology platform designed to modify genetic sequences within the genome to correct disease-causing genetic mutations.
The startup is using gene-editing technology to advance a number of drug discovery programmes targeted at areas such as the liver, eye, ex-vivo hematopoietic stem cell and neuro-muscular indications.
The funding will drive Prime Medicine’s growth and enable it to further develop its technology platform. Its Prime Editing technology was developed by co-founders David Liu and Andrew Anzalone at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Broad Institute and Harvard University.
The company has a partnership in place with Beam Therapeutics, a genomic therapy developer that also emerged from the laboratory of David Liu and which is also backed by GV.
GV general partner David Schenkein said: “Prime Editing represents an opportunity to do what no gene-editing approach has yet been capable of – correcting nearly all types of pathogenic gene mutations, correcting multiple mutations at once and bringing durable cures to patients across multiple disease areas, potentially with a single ‘once and done’ treatment approach.”