Genome editing-based company, Precision BioSciences announced it has closed $25.6 million Series A financing led by venBio. The Research Triangle Park, North Carolina-based company’s oversubscribed round was also joined by Fidelity Biosciences, Amgen Ventures, Baxter Ventures, Osage University Partners, the Longevity Fund, and two well-known public market investors. As part of the Series A round, Robert Adelman of venBio and Ben Auspitz of Fidelity Biosciences will join Precision’s Board alongside Precision’s Chief Executive Officer, Matthew Kane and Chief Scientific Officer, Derek Jantz. Precision is developing genome editing-based products to address critical needs in human health, agriculture, and beyond.
The capital will be used to accelerate development of greatly needed products enabled by the ARCUS genome editing technology. ARCUS is Precision’s latest proprietary genome editing platform and the first to combine the target site flexibility of a Transcription Activator-Like Nuclease (TALEN) or Clustered, Regularly Interspaced Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) with the exquisite site specificity and small size of a homing endonuclease, overcoming the major shortcomings of earlier editing technologies. Further, the platform is uniquely protected by a strong estate of issued intellectual property while being unencumbered by third party genome editing IP.
“We are thrilled to welcome such a strong and diverse group of investors as our company enters into this exciting next phase of translational product development,” said Matthew Kane. “This financing will allow us to expand beyond our successful efforts to develop the leading next-gen genome editing platform and significantly accelerate the development of our genome-edited product pipeline.”
