AIRNA emerges from stealth with $30M financing
Posted on September 26th, 2023
AIRNA, a startup company co-founded by SPARK scholars Dr. Jin Billy Li and Dr. Paul Vogel, emerged from stealth with a $30 million financing round led by ARCH Venture Partners to advance novel RNA technology to treat diseases with high unmet needs.
Dr. Li and Dr. Vogel’s SPARK project investigated the use of endogenous ADAR-mediated RNA editing to treat genetic diseases. Dr. Li and Dr. Vogel established a collaboration with co-founder Dr. Thorsten Stafforst at University of Tübingen to develop the ADAR-mediated RNA editing therapeutics.
ADAR-mediated RNA editing holds great potential for treating both rare and common diseases. ADAR-directed RNA editing delivers a safe oligonucleotide that is programmed to recruit an endogenous cellular enzyme, ADAR, to introduce a precise modification to a patient’s RNA, resulting in changes to the encoded therapeutic proteins.
AIRNA first plans to develop a best-in-class product candidate to treat the inherited genetic disease alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (AATD).
Read more in the news release here.
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