When Moonwalk Biosciences launched in 2024, it set ambitious plans to mine the epigenome for new drugs, backed by the likes of Arch Venture Partners and Khosla Ventures to develop a treatment based on gene editing technology licensed from the Broad Institute.
Two years later, the San Francisco-area biotechnology company announced Tuesday a new round of venture funding to the tune of $70 million, as well as a blueprint for how it’s employing an RNA interference drug, licensed from a Chinese drugmaker, to treat obesity. Moonwalk CEO Alex Aravanis argues it’s not a drastic departure from what the startup said its mandate was at launch.
“It's more of an evolution of the story,” he said in an interview.
Aravanis said Moonwalk’s scientists, in the company’s early days, looked at the epigenome to find new targets. But they determined that RNAi treatments, which can mute a gene before it sends out instructions to make troublesome or mutated proteins, “would be a faster way for us to bring it to the clinic,” he said.
Now, it’s developing a pipeline of treatments based on small interfering RNA to target adipose, or body fat. The technology it’s relying on was licensed from Suzhou Siran Biotechnology Co. earlier this year, Aravanis said.
Moonwalk expects to take its lead experimental treatment, codenamed “MW101,” into human testing by the end of 2027. Though it’s disclosed little about that first drug, the startup plans to follow with several other siRNA treatments for obesity and other cardiometabolic diseases.
Moonwalk is part of a small class of biotechs developing nucleic acid therapies for obesity and metabolic disorders. ADARx Pharmaceuticals, which last week filed plans for an initial public offering, is also involved. And a third competitor, Wave Life Sciences, has in mid-stage testing its own siRNA drug in people with obesity. While data from an earlier trial showed “substantial reductions of fat” and waist circumference, Wave’s drug fell short of investor expectations for how it’d perform.
That drug, “WVE-007,” goes after targets in the liver, rather than regulating fat cells like Moonwalk's technology. And unlike GLP-1 drugs that have dominated the obesity market, Moonwalk's prospects aren't appetite suppressants, which Aravanis said could provide an advantage in avoiding gastrointestinal side effects and help preserve muscle. "Our mechanisms are around modulating, so increasing the metabolism and lipolysis, which break down fat, and the energy regulation within the fat cells,” Aravanis said.
The Series B round was co-led by Alpha Wave Global and YK Bioventures, with backing from Eli Lilly, Gaorong Ventures, Arch, Khosla and Future Ventures.
