Generare, a Paris, France-based biotechnology company using novel cloning technique for new medicines and molecules hiding in microbes, raised €5M in Seed funding.
Backers included Teampact.ventures, Galion.Exe and EU-backed VIVES Partners.
The company intends to use the funds to refine its technology, expand its library of genetic data, further industrialise its approach, and hire for its engineering and lab team internationally.
Founded in 2023 by CEO Guillaume Vandenesch and CSO Dr Vincent Libis, Generare provides a data-driven discovery platform that is built on a decade of research into synthetic biology, DNA sequencing, and computational biology. It takes bacteria found in soil and breaks down their genetic code to uncover untapped bioactive molecules, called Natural Products (NPs).
Instead of targeting specific gene clusters or synthesising compounds one at a time – a common, yet slow, expensive and constrained method – Generare is using shotgun cloning to break thousands of genomes into millions of random fragments. These fragments can each be cloned and analysed, in parallel, to see if they encode molecules with bioactive properties, such as antibiotic or anticancer effects.
This technique allows the company to express hundreds of gene clusters at once, thereby increasing the chances of identifying bioactive molecules exponentially. It also creates a virtuous circle of discovery because when Generare gathers more data, it has a better understanding of which clusters are most likely to yield valuable molecules. In this way, the team can focus on the most productive samples and expand its molecular “library”. This increases the chances of the novel molecules having higher potential to be “first-in-class” entities.
The firm recently signed a partnership with French biotech, Aurobac Therapeutics, to accelerate the discovery and development of novel drugs.
FinSMEs
08/10/2024