Chroma Medicine and Nvelop Therapeutics announced their merger and subsequent launch of nChroma Bio, redefining the future of genetic medicines. nChroma combines potent epigenetic editing with non-viral, programmable delivery to address key limitations in the field and expand the scope of treatable diseases. The merger will result in an industry-leading company with a deeply experienced team. Jeff Walsh will serve as nChroma’s CEO, and Jeff Marrazzo will serve as its Chairman of the Board.
Along with the merger, nChroma also completed an oversubscribed $75 million financing to provide the company with additional capital to drive the lead program to meaningful clinical data and to build a robust pipeline of next-generation hepatic and extrahepatic targeted therapies. The funding round was led by Cormorant Asset Management, ARCH Venture Partners, Atlas Venture and Newpath Partners, with participation from other top-tier investors, including 5AM Ventures, DCVC Bio, F-Prime Capital, GV (Google Ventures), Janus Henderson Investors, Mubadala Capital, Omega Funds, Sixth Street, Sofinnova Partners, T. Rowe Price, Wellington Management, Alexandria Venture Investments, Casdin Capital, Menlo Ventures and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.
The $75 million in new financing and the significant cash on hand for both companies at the time of the merger provide multiple years of runway. The funds will enable the continued development of nChroma’s epigenetic editing platform, utilizing nature’s innate gene regulation mechanism. They will also advance lead candidate CRMA-1001 into the clinic and to key data readouts for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B and hepatitis D coinfection.
CRMA-1001 has shown best-in-class, durable silencing of HBV biomarkers in preclinical models, expected to drive high functional cure rates in patients. And this approach results in a differentiated product, setting it apart from previous modalities that have failed to achieve meaningful functional cure rates for hepatitis B. Plus, unlike current editing approaches, nChroma’s epigenetic editors have a fundamental mechanistic advantage by modulating gene expression without cutting or nicking the DNA, eliminating the risk of activation of DNA repair pathways and the potential for genomic rearrangement. The funds will also support the progression of multiple pipeline programs and nChroma’s differentiated programmable, non-viral vehicles for safe and efficient tissue-specific in vivo delivery beyond the liver.
nChroma Bio’s leadership includes a highly experienced team of scientists and company builders at the forefront of genetic medicine, including:
— Melissa Bonner, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer
— Noah Goodman, Chief Business Officer
— Padma Malyala, Senior Vice President, Technology Development
— Jenny Marlowe, PhD, Chief Development Officer
— Lisa McGrath, Chief People Officer
— Jeff Walsh, Chief Executive Officer
Catherine Stehman-Breen, Chroma Medicine’s CEO, will continue to be involved as an advisor and provide guidance and expertise to the company.
KEY QUOTES:
“This union represents a compelling opportunity to bring together a truly novel and differentiated cargo company and a next generation in vivo delivery company to fully enable the future of in vivo genetic medicine. The new company will allow us to leverage the technologies, talent and capital of both organizations to drive products into the clinic and to forge strategic partnerships to expand our reach into new tissues and diseases. Importantly, I’d like to acknowledge everyone whose hard work and dedication have been instrumental in bringing us to where we are today, and I am excited about the future of nChroma.”
- Jeff Walsh, Chief Executive Officer
“As someone who has had the privilege of serving on the boards of both organizations, this merger represents the culmination of a shared vision to create a new organization with an expanded set of tools and technologies and a leadership team poised to lead the field of genetic medicine and deliver on our collective commitment to patients.”
- Chairman Jeff Marrazzo
“We are just beginning to scratch the surface of epigenetic editing as a therapeutic approach. The continued engineering on both epigenetic editing cargo and extrahepatic delivery happening at nChroma have immense potential to create new medicines.”
- Chroma Medicine co-founder Luke Gilbert, PhD, Associate Professor, UCSF and Core Investigator, Arc Institute
