USA – Affinia Therapeutics, a Waltham, Mass.-based gene therapy company, closed a $60m Series A financing.
The round was co-led by F-Prime Capital and New Enterprise Associates alongside new investor Atlas Venture, with participation from seed investors Alexandria Venture Investments, Lonza and Partners Innovation Fund. Joining the board of directors as part of the financing are Dave Grayzel, M.D., Partner, Atlas Venture; Ed Mathers, General Partner, NEA; and Robert Weisskoff, Ph.D., Partner, F-Prime Capital. Industry veteran and gene therapy leader Sean Nolan will chair the board. The company intends to use the funds to advance its platform and develop gene therapies for people affected by muscle and central nervous system (CNS) diseases. Led by recently appointed Chief Executive Officer Rick Modi, Affinia Therapeutics operates a proprietary platform that methodically engineers novel AAV vectors and gene therapies that have tissue targeting and other properties. Its gene therapy products have an initial focus on muscle and central nervous system (CNS) diseases. The company’s technology was developed at the Grousbeck Gene Therapy Center and further advanced under a sponsored research agreement with Lonza led by Luk Vandenberghe, Ph.D., Associate Professor at Mass. Eye and Ear and Harvard Medical School and a co-inventor of AAV9. In addition to Vandenberghe, joining Affinia Therapeutics as scientific co-founders are Botond Roska, M.D., Ph.D., Director, Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel; Aaron Tward, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University of California, San Francisco; and Eric Zinn, Ph.D. student, Mass. Eye and Ear and Harvard University. 02/04/2020
