CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dyno Therapeutics, Inc., a biotechnology company applying artificial intelligence (AI) to gene therapy, today announced a $100 million Series A financing led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from a select syndicate of new investors including Casdin Capital, GV, Obvious Ventures and Lux Capital. Founding investors Polaris Partners, CRV and KdT Ventures all participated in the round. Funds from this financing will directly fund expansion of the company’s CapsidMap™ platform, which uses AI technology for the design of novel Adeno-Associated Virus (AAV) gene therapy vectors, broadening the functionality and enhancing the therapeutic impact of gene therapies developed by Dyno’s biopharmaceutical partners.
Proceeds from the financing will accelerate building Dyno’s CapsidMap platform to design improved vectors targeting liver, muscle, eye and central nervous system (CNS) disease, as well as growing into new areas of lung, heart and kidney disease. Dyno will also use the proceeds to support its multiple partnership efforts with leading gene therapy biopharmaceutical companies by growing its operations, intellectual property, business development and partner success teams. This expansion augments Dyno’s existing partnerships to develop AAV vectors for Novartis, Sarepta and Roche and builds capacity to work with many additional partners. The financing will enable Dyno to significantly increase its employee base across science, machine learning and business functions.
“Dyno’s AI-powered approach to designing gene therapy vectors has transformative potential to expand the treatment landscape for gene therapies, opening new opportunities to cure thousands of diseases for patients,” said Jorge Conde, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “Up until now, gene therapies have been stymied from treating more diseases and reaching more patients due to the limitations of naturally occurring AAV vectors. The field needs improved gene delivery and is eager to discover and adopt improved AAV vectors. Dyno directly addresses and solves this challenge.”
As part of the Series A financing, Mr. Conde joins the company’s board of directors. Dyno launched in late 2018 and has funded operations to date from its seed financing and financial resources generated from partnerships with biopharmaceutical companies.
“This Series A financing accelerates our AI-powered discovery of best-in-class capsids targeting all major organs and cell types, enabling Dyno to grow our business infrastructure and establish more partnerships to become the premier developer of gene therapy vectors,” said Eric Kelsic, PhD, founder and CEO of Dyno Therapeutics. "Dyno was the first to combine machine learning with data from high-throughput in vivo experiments to optimize and accelerate the design of improved capsids for gene therapy. Our CapsidMap platform brings unprecedented scale and technical sophistication to solving in vivo delivery, the key challenge for gene therapy, making therapies more effective, safe, manufacturable and capable of benefiting more patients.”
Kelsic added, “Culturally, we’re focused on achieving what we call Collective Innovation: empowering a diverse team of the best problem solvers to drive cutting-edge science towards improving patient health. We’re delighted to welcome a group of experienced investors to our team, and excited to ramp up recruiting of diverse and driven team members to help us realize the full potential of gene therapy.”
About CapsidMap™ for Designing Optimized AAV Gene Therapies
Dyno’s CapsidMap™ platform overcomes the limitations of gene therapies on the market and under development today by optimizing capsids, the cell-targeting protein shells of Adeno-Associated Virus (AAV) vectors. Current gene therapies primarily use a small number of naturally occurring capsids that are limited by delivery efficiency, pre-existing immunity, payload size, and manufacturing challenges. CapsidMap works in two stages, first by measuring capsid properties in high-throughput using next-generation DNA library synthesis and DNA sequencing. With these vast quantities of in vivo data, CapsidMap then generates improved capsid sequences by applying advanced search algorithms that leverage machine learning. Dyno’s comprehensive map of capsid sequence space and AI‑powered tools thereby accelerate the design of AAV gene therapies with optimized properties including improved efficiency, safety, manufacturability and applicability for treating a broader range of diseases.
About Dyno Therapeutics
Dyno Therapeutics is a pioneer in applying artificial intelligence (AI) and quantitative high-throughput in vivo experiments to gene therapy. The company’s proprietary CapsidMap™ platform rapidly discovers and systematically optimizes Adeno-Associated Virus (AAV) capsid vectors that significantly outperform current approaches for in vivo gene delivery, thereby expanding the range of diseases treatable with gene therapies. Dyno was founded in 2018 by experienced biotech entrepreneurs and leading scientists in the fields of gene therapy and machine learning. The company is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Visit www.dynotx.com for additional information.
