Crispr* Therapeutics, a Basel, Switzerland-based biopharmaceutical company focused on translating CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology into transformative medicines, raised $64m in Series A and Series B rounds, which now total $89m.
This included $35m of new funding in the Series A and $29m in the Series B round. The Series A and Series B rounds were led by strategic investors, SR One and Celgene Corporation, respectively, and included new investors New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Abingworth, alongside founding investor Versant Ventures. In conjunction with the funding, Simeon George, SR One, Ali Behbahani, NEA, and Kurt von Emster, Abingworth, will be joining Crispr’s Board of Directors.
Led by Chief Executive Officer Rodger Novak, the company was created to translate CRISPR-Cas9*, a gene-editing technology, into transformative medicines for serious human diseases. Crispr has undertaken translational development programs in several important disease areas with collaborators in Europe and the U.S. and maintains operations in Basel, Switzerland, Stevenage, UK and Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
*Cas9 is an enzyme that can be programmed with RNA to cut DNA at targeted sites within the genome, enabling the deletion, insertion or correction of target genes, including those that cause diseases, with surgical precision.
*CRISPR means clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats; Cas means CRISPR-associated.
FinSMEs
29/04/2015
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