SAN DIEGO STARTUP DTX PHARMA RAISES $100M FOR PLATFORM TO TREAT DISEASES

Treating with RNA-based therapies

DTx Pharma, a 15-employee San Diego biotechnology company pursuing a platform for creating RNA-based therapies to treat genetic drivers of rare diseases, said Monday that it had raised $100 million in a Series B round of financing.

The early-stage company, which previously raised $10.6 million in a Series A round in January 2020, is pursuing potential treatments in ophthalmology and for neuromuscular diseases initially.

According to DTx Pharma’s website, its most advanced program in the eye arena targets a disease called retinitis pigmentosa, which is often inherited. It anticipates initiating clinical work on this treatment in 2022.

In the neuromuscular area, the company is looking into multiple diseases driven by genetic defects in skeletal muscle, cardiac muscle and the peripheral nervous system. It expects to move its first neuromuscular disease candidates into clinical development in 2023.

DTx Pharma is the second San Diego life science company to pull in a large funding

round in the past week. Truvian Sciences, which is making a bench-top blood testing platform for pharmacies and clinics, announced last Tuesday that it had raised $105 million.

DTx Pharma’s proprietary platform is called FALCON, an acronym for Fatty Acid Ligand Conjugated Oligonucleotide.

Arthur Suckow, Ph.D. and chief executive of DTx Pharma, said the platform aims to enable the delivery of RNA-based therapies to tissues that were previously inaccessible to such treatments.

“The DTx Pharma team has uncovered new ways to leverage fatty acids to overcome some of the challenges that have greatly limited RNA therapeutics as a class,” Suckow said in a statement. “These funds will allow us to utilize our FALCON fatty acid motifs to advance assets into clinical development across several therapeutic areas over the next few years.”

RA Capital Management led the financing round. It was joined by new investors Access Biotechnology, Cormorant Asset Management, Janus Henderson Investors, Logos Capital and Surveyor Capital — a Citadel company.

Existing investors also participated, including Friedman Bioventure Fund, Eli Lilly and Co., Viva BioInnovator and ExSight Ventures.

Matthew Hammond, a Ph.D. and principal at RA Capital Management, and Dan Becker, an M.D. and partner with Access Biotechnology, will join DTx Pharma’s board of directors.