The most extensive toolbox of proprietary genomic editors in the industry to enable development of curative, next-generation genetic medicines
Co-founded by David Walt, Ph.D. and Feng Zhang, Ph.D.
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Arbor Biotechnologies, a biotechnology company discovering and developing the next generation of genetic medicines, today announced the completion of an oversubscribed and up-sized $215 million Series B financing. Including this round, the Company has raised over $300 million to date.
Arbor plans to use the proceeds to advance its lead programs in liver and CNS disease into the clinic and progress a pipeline of precision editing therapeutics, while also continuing to invest in its novel discovery engine to develop the next generation of gene editing technology.
The round was led by Temasek, Ally Bridge Group, and TCG Crossover. Additional new investors included Arrowmark Partners, Deep Track Capital, Great Point Ventures, Illumina Ventures, Janus Henderson Investors, Logos Capital, Ono Venture Investment, Piper Heartland Healthcare Capital, Ridgeback Capital Investments, Section 32, Surveyor Capital (a Citadel company), T. Rowe Price Associates, Tao Capital Partners, funds managed by Tekla Capital Management LLC, Woodline Partners LP, and an undisclosed global investment fund. This round also included investment from strategic partner Vertex Pharmaceuticals and continued support from existing investors, such as ARCH Venture Partners.
As part of the Series B Financing, Chen Yu, Managing Partner at TCG Crossover, will join the Company’s Board of Directors.
“We are pleased to have attracted capital and support from top investors as well as our collaboration partner, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, to help us achieve our vision of developing curative, next-generation genetic medicines for patients with serious genetic diseases,” said Devyn Smith, Ph.D., CEO, Arbor Biotechnologies. “By leveraging our proprietary discovery engine — which applies machine learning and AI to mine our protein database containing billions of proteins — we have successfully built the most extensive toolbox of wholly owned CRISPR genomic editors in the industry. This breadth of tools and IP enables us, and our partners, to approach numerous diseases with gene editing solutions that can be tailored to edit or rewrite the genetic errors that result in disease pathology. This provides us with the ability to target the root cause of genetic diseases.”
Continued Dr. Smith: “With this investment, we are well-positioned to continue advancing toward the clinic with our initial focus in liver and first-in-class treatments for CNS diseases, as well as continue to build out our proprietary discovery engine. While our primary focus has been on developing our bespoke CRISPR nucleases, we are also looking to progress our other precision editing innovations, such as CRISPR transposases.”
Commented Paul Meister, Chairman of the Board: “The investment from these leading entities validates the power of the platform and tools we have discovered at Arbor Biotechnologies. We welcome Dr. Yu to the board and look forward to his contributions as the company works toward deploying these new therapies to treat patients in the near future.”
Added Frank Yu, Founder, CEO, and CIO at Ally Bridge Group: “We’re proud to lead Arbor Biotechnologies’ Series B financing to enable this world class team to further develop the leading next-generation gene editing platform and catalyze novel gene editing approaches and novel curative therapies.”
About Arbor
Arbor Biotechnologies is a life sciences company discovering and developing the next generation of genetic medicines based on wholly owned genomic editors discovered from its machine learning/AI driven discovery platform. Since its founding in 2016 by Feng Zhang, David Walt, David Scott and Winston Yan, Arbor has built the most extensive toolbox of proprietary genomic editors in the industry. Using the discovery platform, Arbor can discover, screen, and engineer novel editing enzymes and effectors that can then be tailored to the underlying cause of disease to result in potentially curative medicines for patients. As Arbor continues to advance its pipeline toward the clinic with an initial focus in liver and CNS disease, the Company has also partnered with Vertex Pharmaceuticals on several gene editing and ex vivo cell therapy programs to broaden the reach of its novel nuclease technology.