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Seamless Therapeutics launches with $12.5m in financing

Seamless Therapeutics, a biotech focusing on the therapeutic potential of gene therapies, has announced it received $12.5m (€11.8m) in seed funding. The company will use the funding to accelerate research into its designer recombinases, a novel gene editing platform that will aid the treatment of severe diseases.

Recombinases are a class of widely used enzymes that can precisely modify the genome of model organisms but, until now, they could not be applied therapeutically due to their limited programmability to act on new target sites. Seamless Therapeutics has changed this, with its pioneering platform having successfully reprogrammed site-specific recombinases to any given target sequence to make specific changes including inversion, excision, exchange and insertion from small to larger DNA fragments.

The seed round was led by both Wellington Partners and Forbion ‒ representatives from both will now join Seamless’ Board of Directors. The round also included non-dilutive financing from BMBF GO-Bio, a German Government initiative, which supports innovative start-ups in life sciences.

Anne-K Heninger PhD, co-founder and CEO of Seamless Therapeutics, commented: “Our goal is to apply our deep understanding of recombinases to leverage their inherent benefits to repair genetic alterations that cause disease. We believe our pioneering technology will allow us to shatter the boundaries that exist in gene editing methods today. Both Wellington and Forbion are visionaries and highly experienced biotech investors, and we look forward to working closely with them in our efforts to transform the gene editing landscape.”

“Our modular platform has succeeded in reprogramming site-specific recombinases to any given target sequence effectively breaking the existing hurdles of leveraging this potential best-in-class gene editing system to treat human disease. I look forward to working with our founding investors and our highly skilled team to apply our deep knowledge of recombinases to develop a pipeline of novel treatments,” said Felix Lansing, co-founder and CSO of Seamless Therapeutics.