ReNAgade Therapeutics – a company unlocking the limitless potential for RNA medicines to correct disease – recently announced a $300 million Series A financing round led by MPM BioImpact and F2 Ventures.
The company has built a comprehensive and complementary platform that combines its proprietary delivery technologies, including novel lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) with a broad array of coding, editing, and gene insertion tools, in an all-RNA system. Plus ReNAgade aims to address major limitations in RNA therapeutics by enabling the delivery of RNA medicines to previously inaccessible tissues and cells in the body, substantially expanding the potential addressable disease market.
ReNAgade has an established Joint Venture with Orna Therapeutics, combining ReNAgade’s delivery platform with Orna’s circular RNA technology. Subsequently, Orna has entered into a collaboration with Merck, which includes technologies developed under the Orna/ReNAgade JV.
Founded by MPM BioImpact, ReNAgade is led by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Amit D. Munshi, an industry veteran with more than 30 years of experience leading biotech companies and most recently the CEO of Arena Pharmaceuticals with support from a world-class executive and scientific team with deep and translational expertise across multiple RNA modalities. And Pete Smith, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer and an Executive Partner at MPM BioImpact, joins from Alnylam having previously served as Chief Early Development Officer and prior to that Senior Vice President and Head of R&D Nonclinical at Moderna while Ciaran Lawlor, Ph.D. joins as Chief Operating Officer from Boston Consulting Group, having previously held multiple scientific roles at Moderna. Plus Brian Shuster joins as Chief Business Officer from Bristol Myers Squibb. Brian previously worked at Johnson & Johnson where he led acquisitions, divestitures and equity investing, and at J.P. Morgan, where he worked with biotech companies on strategic and financing transactions.
KEY QUOTES:
“ReNAgade was founded on a bold idea – to dramatically transcend the boundaries of RNA medicine, a field that has made great strides but remains in its infancy. By innovating on delivery technology and bringing an array of genomic medicine tools under one roof, ReNAgade is poised to deliver RNA to organs and tissues not previously accessible. ReNAgade’s joint venture with Orna provides early validation of the technologies that ReNAgade will continue to bring forward.”
— Ansbert Gadicke, M.D., Managing Partner of MPM Bioimpact and Founder of ReNAgade
“In order to fulfill our mission to develop RNA medicines with the potential to treat any disease anywhere in the body, we have curated a world-class, multidisciplinary team who have collectively achieved 25 NDAs, including four in RNA medicines, and 200 INDs, and have been pioneers in the field of RNA medicines. We are further buoyed by the support of our long-term investors and validated by the progress we have made to date – making us well-positioned to expand the reach of RNA medicine far beyond what was previously thought possible.”
— Amit D. Munshi, Chief Executive Officer of ReNAgade
