Dive Brief:

• Kriya Therapeutics has raised an additional $150 million to fund its quest to develop one-time gene therapies for a variety of diseases.
• Patient Square Capital led the financing, which included a number of other undisclosed investors. The cash adds to a Series C financing of $270 million announced in May last year and brings the company’s total committed capital to more than $600 million.
• The funds will help the company move gene therapies into the clinic and scale up engineering, computational and manufacturing platforms, Kriya said Wednesday. It also extends the company’s cash runway into late 2026.

Dive Insight:

Founded in October 2019, Kriya has lofty ambitions, describing its ultimate goal as “eliminating human suffering” from disease. CEO Shankar Ramaswamy says the company stands apart from rivals because its research platform can overcome challenges that have hampered the gene therapy field in research, development and manufacturing.

Ramaswamy is the brother of Roivant Sciences founder and presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy. He co-founded Kriya after stints at Roivant and Sio Gene Therapies, which folded in December. He says Kriya has won over investors with its in-house manufacturing capabilities and ability to develop multiple gene therapies in parallel.

To start, Kriya is focused on ophthalmology, neurology and metabolic disease, helped by the November acquisition of Redpin Therapeutics and its lead programs in epilepsy and trigeminal neuralgia. Kriya is also aiming to develop treatments for diabetes, glycogen storage diseases, diabetic retinopathy, noninfectious uveitis and geographic atrophy.

All told, the company says it’s developing treatments for conditions that affect millions of patients. Gene therapy has the “potential to usher in a new era of medicine – a future where gene therapy is not confined to a limited range of rare diseases but instead harnessed to address a wide array of medical conditions,” Jim Momtazee, managing partner of Patient Square, said in a statement.

But Kriya will be advancing its research at a time when many biotechs, including gene therapy developers, have been forced to cut back, and narrow their pipelines to conserve cash. It has a long way to go, too. None of its programs have entered clinical testing yet.