Kriya Bags $270 Million Series C to Support Integrated Gene Therapies

Gene therapy company Kriya Therapeutics enjoyed a $270 million Series C funding round that will aid the advancement of its pipeline and the scaling-up of its engineering, production and computational platforms. 

The financing was led by Patient Square Capital, with participation from Bluebird Ventures, CAM Capital, Dexcel Pharma, Foresite Capital, JDRF T1D Fund, Lightswitch Capital, Narya Capital, QVT. Transhuman Capital, and other undisclosed investors. 

Expanding Gene Therapy Pipeline and Production

Earlier this year, Redwood City, California-based Kriya acquired Warden Bio, a Duke University spinout developing gene therapies for glycogen storage disorders. The buyout came with five preclinical gene therapies, allowing Kriya to set up a rare disease division. 

In recent months, the company began operations in its GMP manufacturing plant in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina to support in-house production from early to late stage development. 

Kriya aso scaled SIRVE, its machine-learning-enabled technology and cloud computing architecture to help integrate the large datasets generated by the company’s high throughput screening, next generation sequencing and algorithmic data mining platforms.

The company has also been busy with collaborations. Soon after buying Warden Bio, Kriya entered an exclusive agreement with the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Foundation for Research Development to license gene therapies for atrophic age-related macular degeneration, a common progressive retinal disease, and other ocular diseases. 

In March, the company teamed up with Twist Bioscience to discover antibodies that can be delivered by adeno-associated viral (AAV) gene therapy for indications in oncology. 

The amount raised by Kriya in its Series C round was more than double that of its $100 million Series B last July. This builds on the $80.5 million raised by the company in a Series A in May 2020.

Author

Joy Lin

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