UK – Replay, a San Diego, CA and London, UK-based genome writing company reprogramming biology by writing and delivering big DNA, raised $55m in seed financing.
The round was led by KKR and OMX Ventures, with participation from ARTIS Ventures and Lansdowne Partners, SALT, DeciBio Ventures, and Axial. Replay is a genome writing company, which has assembled a toolkit of platform technologies – including a high payload capacity HSV platform, a hypoimmunogenic platform, and a genome writing platform – to address the scientific challenges currently limiting clinical progress and preventing genomic medicine from realising its full potential. The company has, additionally, established an enzyme writing product company engaging its evolutionary inference machine learning and genome writing technology to optimize functionality. Replay was co-founded by Dr. Adrian Woolfson BM BCh PhD, formerly Executive Vice President and Head of Research and Development at Sangamo Therapeutics, Chief Medical Officer at Nouscom, Global Clinical Leader of Early and Late Stage Immuno-Oncology/Hematology at Pfizer and Global Medical Lead in Oncology at Bristol Myers Squibb; Lachlan MacKinnon, a member of the founding team at Oxford Science Enterprises (formerly OSI) and founding investor in Base Genomics, ONI and OMass Therapeutics; Professor David Knipe PhD, a world-renowned virologist and pioneer of HSV research; and Professor Ron Weiss PhD, one of the pioneers of synthetic biology and Professor of Biological Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).The company is also supported by a distinguished team of entrepreneurs and international experts including product company co-founders: Professor Joe Glorioso PhD, inventor of Replay’s synHSV™ technology and Senior Advisor for Gene Therapy Programs at Replay, Co-founder of Oncorus, and Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh; Mark Blumenkranz, MD, MMS, the HJ Smead Professor of Ophthalmology, Emeritus, at the Stanford School of Medcine, Co-Director of the Stanford Opthalmology Innovation Program, and former Chairman of the Board and Co-founder of Adverum Biotechnologies; Professor Howard Federoff MD PhD, Co-Founder of Brain Neurotherapy Bio, and former CEO of Aspen Neuroscience and Brooklyn Immunotherapeutics; and Professor David Schaffer PhD, Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Bioengineering and Neuroscience at University of California, Berkeley, and Co-founder of 4D Molecular Therapeutics.25/07/2022
