Tenaya Raises $106 Million Series C Round To Fight Heart Disease

On March 1st, Tenaya Therapeutics, a San Francisco-based biotech, announced its $106 million Series C funding. The company aims to deliver curative therapies that address the underlying causes of heart disease and intend to use the funds to develop its three proprietary platforms.

Three Platforms and Growth

Gene Therapy, Cellular Regeneration, and Precision Drug Discovery are the three platforms that Tenaya is growing. Since its Series B round in 2019, the company has added depth to its drug discovery capabilities. This includes disease modeling in the form of a phenotypic screening of human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocyte (iPSC-CM) disease models. This makes use of proprietary imaging and machine learning algorithms. The target for the company’s first small molecule project was identified through such screening, and it provided important proof-of-concept for the utility of this novel approach.

To advance its gene therapy platform, Tenaya has established in-house AAV capsid engineering capabilities and has successfully screened hundreds of millions of variants from diverse, proprietary libraries to discover novel AAV capsids with higher tropism for the heart as opposed to other organs, as well as capsids that can more target cardiomyocytes rather than the cardiac fibroblasts in the heart. These novel AAV capsids will assist with delivering Tenaya’s gene therapy products MYBPC3 and DWORF. MYBPC3 is an AAV gene therapy for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and DWORF an AAV gene therapy for a muscle-specific micro-peptide of the same name.

Tenaya has grown its cellular regeneration platform using AAV vectors to deliver proprietary combinations of multiple genes that drive in vivo reprogramming of resident cardiac fibroblasts to create new cardiomyocytes. Results of this approach were first presented at scientific conferences in 2020 and represent the first successful demonstration of this approach in an animal model with a human-sized heart.

The company is developing small molecule therapies that have demonstrated compelling in vivo efficacy in a model for genetic dilated cardiomyopathy as well as in additional models that support its use in more prevalent heart failure populations.

To complete the list of advancements is the establishment of Tenaya’s increased manufacturing abilities. The company has established an in-house Pilot Plant Operation at the 200L scale with the key Process Development (PD), Analytical Development (AD), and Quality Control (QC) personnel to support it. To help house these activities, Tenaya will establish a dedicated cGMP facility for drug product manufacturing in the San Francisco Bay Area. The facility will produce drug products at the 1000L scale to support first-in-human studies for the company’s lead gene therapy program.

Finances and Outlook

Tenaya raised a total of $248 million in its three funding rounds since its 2016 founding. The firm has a total of 8 investors, including RTW Investments LP, RA Capital Management, Fidelity Management & Research Company, and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc.

There is promise in sophisticated drug discovery tools available to pioneer new classes of targeted treatments for heart failure. This includes potentially one-time curative gene therapies for genetic cardiomyopathies. With an increased capacity to do their own manufacturing, Tenaya can become more competitive in the market by either lowering their prices for therapies or reducing time to manufacture by not needing to coordinate with outside vendors. This most recent funding round and the resulting increased capacities can make gene therapies much more accessible to the public.

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Author

Eduardo Longoria