A little more than a year and a half after raising an $80 million round, ReCode Therapeutics is at it again.
The Dallas- and Melo Park, Calif.-based biopharmaceutical company announced closing its $80 million Series B round co-led by Pfizer’s venture capital arm and California biotech investor EcoR1 Capital.
“ReCode is working to unleash the power of genetic medicine by delivering therapies with our… platform, which has the potential to reach across a broad spectrum of diseases involving multiple organs and tissues,” said David Lockhart, CEO and president, in a statement.
ReCode said the new funding will be used to drive human clinical studies for its primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) and cystic fibrosis therapies via its lipid nanoparticle platform (LNP) that are expected to begin next year. In addition, the company will expand its treatment pipeline, while developing the platform for organ-specific delivery. According to the San Francisco Business Journal, part of that work will take place in the pilot manufacturing plant ReCode is looking to build out in Menlo Park over the next couple of years.
The company said its preclinical data shows its LNPs, shells of synthesized lipids, can restore function in the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator and its LNP-wrapped mRNA therapy for PCD restores ciliary activity.
“ReCode’s platform has the potential to unlock vast capabilities un-addressable by first-generation mRNA and gene editing programs and enable development of therapeutics for patients with diseases that have historically been untreatable,” said Oleg Nodelman, founder and portfolio manager of EcoR1 Capital, in a statement.
According to Crunchbase, the new round brings the total amount ReCode has raised to $162 million. Other investors in the Series B include Hunt Technology Ventures, the Dallas-based investment arm of the Hunt Family, who also participated in ReCode’s oversubscribed $80 million Series A round led by OrbiMed Advisors and Colt Ventures. With the completion of that deal, ReCode finalized its all-stock merger with California’s mRNA-focused TranscripTx. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
As part of the deal, Rana Al-Hallaq, a partner at Pfizer Ventures and executive director of Pfizer Worldwide Business development, along with Nodelman, is joining ReCode’s board. The company’s board also includes R.A. Session II, the founder and CEO of public Dallas biotech firm Taysha Gene Therapies. Now with about 50 employees, ReCode has recently added Angèle Maki as its senior VP of business development and Nicholas France as its senior VP of clinical development.
ReCode was formed in 2015, spun out of a UT Southwestern research project by co-founders Daniel Siegwart, Philip Thomas and Michael Torres.
