Cambridge, Massachusetts-based hCBioscience has secured $24 million from Takeda’s venture arm, Arch Venture Partners and 8VC to go after a newer field of RNA therapeutics that aims to restore protein function.
The financing will bankroll two transfer RNA, or tRNA, platforms, dubbed Patch and Switch, the biotech said Wednesday. Transfer RNAs help translate the genetic code.
The Patch program is going after “nonsense mutations,” also known as premature termination codons, that lead to protein dysfunction because the the code reads as “stop,” meaning the end result is an incomplete protein that will not function properly. The goal is to tamp down on the errors in the genetic code so the full-length protein can be produced.
Meanwhile, the Switch program will target diseases caused by missense mutations. The aim is to highlight unwanted proteins so the body knows to destroy them.
The startup was founded out of the University of Iowa lab of Christopher Ahern, who has identified engineered tRNAs.
The biotech is led by President and CEO Leslie Williams, who was previously chief executive of ImmusanT, another Arch Venture Partners-backed biotech. The company stopped a phase 2 trial of its celiac disease program in June 2019. ImmusanT has gone dark since then, with no website, no updates on its Twitter and LinkedIn page. Williams exited the company in December 2019, according to her LinkedIn.
hC enters the fold a few months after Flagship Pioneering unveiled its own tRNA biotech, aptly named Alltrna. The company is attempting to use a single tRNA med to treat thousands of diseases, CEO Lovisa Afzelius, Ph.D., told Fierce Biotech at the time of its $50 million launch in November 2021.