GRO Biosciences secures $60.3 million in Series B funding round. (Credit: Vladimir Solomianyi on Unsplash)
US-based biotechnology company GRO Biosciences (GRObio) has raised $60.3 million in a Series B funding round co-led by new investors Atlas Venture and Access Biotechnology.
The company is working to leverage synthetic biology to expand amino acid building blocks to advance protein therapeutics.
The Series B round also included participation from previous investors including Leaps by Bayer, Redmile Group, Innovation Endeavors and Digitalis Ventures.
The Series B funding brings the total capital raised by GRO Biosciences to more than $90 million.
The company’s lead program is progliuricase, which is being developed as a treatment for severe and intractable gout, a type of arthritis that causes painful joint inflammation.
ProGly-Uricase is a proprietary uricase enzyme incorporating the company’s ProGly non-standard amino acid (NSAA). The formulation prevents the development of anti-drug antibodies (ADA) and enables patients with severe, refractory gout to achieve effective long-term control of serum uric acid levels.
“GRObio’s ProGly program offers a novel solution for patients with few viable treatment options,” said Dan Becker, managing director of Access Biotechnology.
“Through our collaboration with GRObio, we expect to significantly improve the quality of life for patients in need of treatment across all indications available on the GRO platform.”
GRO Biosciences’ Series B financing will support clinical studies to validate the proof-of-concept of ProGly-Uricase as a treatment for refractory gout in patients with high uric acid levels.
Additionally, the proceeds will be used to expand GRO Biosciences’ Genome Recoded Organisms (GRO) platform for scalable production of therapeutics incorporating a range of NSAAs.
“Having preclinically proven our therapeutic approach and demonstrated the scalability of the GRO platform, we have assembled the ideal team to evolve GRObio into a clinical-stage company,” said Dan Mandel, CEO of GRO Biosciences.
“This funding will enable us to obtain valuable clinical efficacy data in gout while also expanding our platform to demonstrate the first scalable production of a protein containing multiple NSAAs, including simultaneous incorporation of drug, immune recruitment and tissue targeting payloads.”
