Biotechnology company Prime Medicine has launched with $315m funding to advance its Prime Editing platform, a next-generation gene editing technology.
The financing includes a $115m in series A funding along with a $200m in series B financing backed by investors including Arch Venture Partners, F-Prime Capital, GV and Newpath Partners.
It will be utilised to expand the platform capabilities, rapidly advance towards clinical indications and further enhance the Prime Editing platform.
Developed at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Prime Editing acts like a DNA word processor to search and replace disease-causing genetic sequences at their precise location in the genome.
This process avoids double-strand DNA breaks that cause unwanted cellular changes.
Prime Medicine said that the approach has the potential to address more than 90% of known disease-causing mutations and also works in a range of dividing and non-dividing primary human cells and in animals.
Prime Medicine CEO Keith Gottesdiener said: “Prime Editing is a transformative technology that we believe will make a significant impact by addressing the fundamental causes of genetic disease.
“Since Prime began operations in the summer of 2020, we have continued to make great progress in advancing the performance of Prime Editing, which allowed us to close our Series B financing nine months later.
“We are operating from a position of financial strength, and look forward to further developing the technology and progressing our preclinical programs toward the clinic, with the hope that they may cure or halt the progression of genetic diseases for patients.”
Currently, it is working on advancing multiple drug discovery programmes targeted at liver, eye, ex vivo hematopoietic stem cell, and neuromuscular indications.
The company has built a partnership with Beam Therapeutics to form a collaborative approach to fight diseases and speed up Prime Editing development to deliver therapies for patients.
Under the partnership, both the companies will share research, expertise, and intellectual property for assays, know-how, delivery, and manufacturing.
The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has extended a license for prime editing technology to the company for human therapeutic uses under the institute’s inclusive innovation model.