- Tenaya Therapeutics, a company that is aiming to discover, develop, and deliver curative therapies that target the underlying causes of heart disease, has raised $92 million
Tenaya Therapeutics — a company with a mission to discover, develop, and deliver curative therapies that target the underlying causes of heart disease — announced the successful completion of a $92 million Series B financing. This round of funding was led by Casdin Capital and included participation by GV (formerly Google Ventures), The Column Group, and additional undisclosed new and existing investors.
Since launching in 2016, Tenaya has raised $142 million in total funding. Tenaya’s founders are scientists at the Gladstone Institutes and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. The proceeds from this funding will be used for advancing and expanding Tenaya’s pipeline and to strengthen the science, capabilities, and intellectual property that provide the foundation for Tenaya’s multi-modality product platforms – Cellular Regeneration, Gene Therapy, and Precision Medicine.
“We are now well-resourced to build on our capabilities in research and manufacturing, and to accelerate the development of our lead gene therapy and small molecule projects for both orphan and prevalent heart diseases towards the clinic,” said Faraz Ali, Chief Executive Officer of Tenaya. “We are pleased to have a group of experienced private and public investors led by Casdin Capital and The Column Group who support the potential for Tenaya’s science to transform the treatment of heart failure, the leading cause of death in the world.”
In conjunction with this funding round, Casdin Capital chief investment officer Eli Casdin is joining Tenaya’s Board of Directors and Anthony Philippakis, M.D., Ph.D., Venture Partner, GV is joining as Board Observer.
“Tenaya is building a new type of company that views heart disease through the lens of human genetics and that is advancing a diverse set of therapeutic tools to correct it,” added Casdin. “It is a unique company in the field of cardiovascular disease, built on a world-class scientific foundation and driven by a growing team of entrepreneurs and drug developers. We look forward to being a supportive partner in the company’s important and exciting future.”
Tenaya’s Cellular Regeneration platform uses novel adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors to deliver proprietary transcription factors that can drive in vivo reprogramming of resident cardiac fibroblasts into cardiomyocytes with an initial focus on acute and chronic injury following a myocardial infarction. And Tenaya’s Gene Therapy platform uses AAV vectors for the targeted delivery and expression of therapeutic payloads to specific cells in the heart with an initial focus on the treatment of genetically defined cardiomyopathies. Plus Tenaya’s Precision Medicine platform uses isogenic iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes as human disease models for identifying and validating new heart failure targets and to screen for therapeutic compounds with an initial focus on small molecules for the treatment of several genetically defined dilated cardiomyopathies.
