Gene Therapy Industry Grows as Synthego Corporation Raises $200 Million Series E Round
Posted on 02/19/2022
More biotech firms are developing stem cell and gene therapies. CRISPR is a powerful discovery tool for the biotech industry. Redwood City, California-based Synthego Corporation is a genome engineering company. Synthego raised US$ 200 million of growth capital, including a Series E financing led by Perceptive Advisors. Also participating in the round were new investors SoftBank Vision Fund 2 (SoftBank Group Corporation), Declaration Partners, Laurion Capital Management, Logos Capital, GigaFund, and Chimera Abu Dhabi (Chimera Investments LLC) and existing investors Wellington Management, RA Capital Management, and Moore Strategic Ventures. The company also recently appointed Avi Raval as chief financial officer. Prior to joining Synthego, he was a managing director and founding member of the health care group at Perella Weinberg Partners. Synthego Chief Executive Officer Paul Dabrowski runs the company. Before Synthego, Paul Dabrowski was the lead digital designer for the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft at SpaceX.
Series E Money
Synthego will use the proceeds from the Series E financing to accelerate the creation of a cell and gene therapy discovery and development ecosystem to help researchers scale and simplify the translation of new discoveries into novel therapeutics for serious diseases. Specifically, Synthego plans to expand both the capacity and capabilities of its Halo and Eclipse Platforms for research and discovery applications, continuing to drive broad accessibility of genome engineering tools and genome engineered cells. Synthego will also invest in next-generation technologies such as CRISPROff, a light-based system for specific and precise CRISPR editing, and increase its Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) manufacturing capabilities to support its customers’ clinical and therapeutic programs.
Synthego brought together more than 12,000 CRISPR researchers at the largest annual global CRISPR conference. Synthego offers RNA synthesis for CRISPR guides. These guides can have add-ons for chemical modification of the RNA itself for stability, binding, deliverability. The guides are exclusively for gene knockout, and most of it is through bioinformatic sequence prediction, and not experimentally verified. A gene knockout is a genetic technique in which one of an organism’s genes is made inoperative. Synthego not only sells the guides (RNA) but also sells the engineered cells which can have genes knocked in our out.
Advisors
Cowen served as sole placement agent to Synthego for the private placement.
On August 26, 2021, Synthego raised US$ 100 million in Series D financing led by then new investor Wellington Management, co-led by RA Capital Management and 8VC. Additional investors that participated included Founders Fund, Menlo Ventures, and Intel Capital.
On October 23, 2018, Synthego raised US$ 110 million in a Series C financing round led by Founders Fund with additional investment from existing investors 8VC and Menlo Ventures.