Kriya Therapeutics has announced a $270 Million Series C financing that will support advancement of the company’s pipeline and continued scaling of its engineering, manufacturing, and computational platforms. Kriya has a portfolio of gene therapies with initial focus areas in ophthalmology, oncology, rare disease, and chronic disease.
“We believe gene therapy has the potential to redefine medicine over the next decade. However, the field has been constrained by technological and operational challenges that make it difficult and expensive to deliver new products,” said Shankar Ramaswamy, MD, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Kriya.
In recent months, Kriya has reportedly achieved several milestones across key parts of its business. The company significantly expanded its pipeline through its internal R&D efforts, as well as through acquisitions and partnerships with leading companies and academic institutions.
In January 2022, Kriya acquired Warden Bio, a company developing novel AAV-mediated gene therapies for glycogen storage disorders (GSDs). Under the agreement, Kriya obtained exclusive rights to Warden Bio’s five preclinical gene therapy programs. This acquisition will serve as the foundation for Kriya’s Rare Disease Division.
In March of this year, Twist Biosciencef and Kriya announced an antibody discovery agreement for antibodies delivered using adeno-associated viral (AAV) gene therapy in therapeutic oncology applications.
“We believe that vectorized antibodies have the potential to transform the treatment of a range of serious diseases, particularly within the field of oncology,” said Ramaswamy, at the time. “By combining Twist’s best-in-class antibody libraries and discovery expertise with Kriya’s proprietary, computationally-enabled vector engineering platform, we can accelerate the advancement of novel gene therapies that can be combined with other modalities in oncology, including current standards-of-care.”
In addition, the company has reported it “Operationalized its state-of-the-art, scalable GMP manufacturing infrastructure in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina to support in-house production from early through late phase development.”
This infrastructure also supports development and implementation of novel technologies and processes that enable consistent, large-scale manufacturing. Kriya says it has also scaled SIRVE, its machine learning-enabled technology and cloud computing architecture, to support the integration of large datasets generated by the company’s high throughput screening, next generation sequencing, and algorithmic data mining platforms.
The financing was led by Patient Square Capital, with participation from Bluebird Ventures, CAM Capital, Dexcel Pharma, Foresite Capital, JDRF T1D Fund, Lightswitch Capital, Narya Capital, QVT, Transhuman Capital, and other undisclosed investors. Proceeds from this financing will support the advancement of Kriya’s pipeline and continued scaling of its engineering, manufacturing, and computational platforms.
“Kriya was founded to address the primary problems limiting the field, and I am proud of the progress we have made to date. This financing will support our continued growth as we advance our diverse pipeline into the clinic and further scale our core platforms, to achieve our ultimate vision of expanding the reach and unlocking the full potential of gene therapy as a modality,” said Ramaswamy.
“Kriya has made tremendous strides over the past few years, attracting world-class talent, expanding its pipeline, and scaling the infrastructure necessary to unlock the full potential of gene therapy,” said Jim Momtazee, Managing Partner of Patient Square Capital and Kriya Board Member. “We believe the company has the potential to be the clear leader in the evolving gene therapy field, consistent with Patient Square Capital’s focus to build and support category leading companies in health care.”
