ReNAgade Therapeutics, a global company unlocking the limitless potential for RNA medicines to correct disease, announced a $300 million Series A financing round led by MPM BioImpact and F2 Ventures. ReNAgade has built a comprehensive and complementary platform that combines its proprietary delivery technologies, including novel lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), with a comprehensive array of coding, editing, and gene insertion tools, in an all-RNA system.
What is the market offering of ReNAgade Therapeutics?
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, expanding the potential addressable disease market. The firm has a Joint Venture with Orna Therapeutics Inc., combining ReNAgade’s delivery platform with Orna’s circular RNA tech. Orna has entered into a collaboration with Merck, which includes tech developed under the Orna/ReNAgade JV.
Founded by MPM BioImpact, ReNAgade is led by Chairman and CEO 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, translational expertise across multiple RNA modalities.
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 SVP 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. Brian Shuster joins as Chief Business Officer from Bristol Myers Squibb.
Prior, Brian worked at Johnson & Johnson where he led acquisitions, divestitures and equity investing, and at J.P. Morgan, where he worked with biotech firms on financing transactions.
What does the funding mean for ReNAgade?
“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,” commented Ansbert Gadicke, M.D., Managing Partner of MPM Bioimpact and Founder of ReNAgade.
“By innovating on delivery tech and bringing an array of genomic medicine tools under one roof, ReNAgade is poised to deliver RNA to organs and tissues not previously accessible. Its venture with Orna offers early validation of the tech that ReNAgade will further bring forward.”
“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,” said Amit D. Munshi, CEO of ReNAgade.
“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 said.
