ARCH Venture Partners and Google Back Genetic Medicines Tech Company Aera Therapeutics
Posted on 02/21/2023
Boston-based Aera Therapeutics Inc. in 2022 hired Akin Akinc as chief executive officer. Prior to joining Aera Akinc was most recently Senior Vice President and Head of Oncology at Alnylam. Prior to that role, he was the General Manager of the GIVLAARI program, which he led from Phase 3 to approval and launch. GIVLAARI was first approved by the U.S. FDA for the treatment of acute hepatic porphyria in adults in 2019 and has received marketing authorizations in the European Union, Japan, and multiple other territories. Aera’s delivery platform is based on research conducted in the laboratory of scientific founder Feng Zhang, Ph.D., core member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, McGovern Institute investigator, the James and Patricia Poitras Professor of Neuroscience at MIT and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
In early 2023, Aera Therapeutics announced they raised US$ 193 million in combined Series A and B financings led by ARCH Venture Partners, GV (Google Ventures), and Lux Capital. Everyone on GV’s life sciences team came in as a physician, scientist, or operator. Google Ventures started investing in healthcare in 2009.
Genetic Medicines
Aera’s proprietary protein nanoparticle (PNP) genetic medicine delivery platform leverages the discovery of endogenous, human proteins derived from retroelements that can self-assemble to form capsid-like structures and which can package and transfer nucleic acid cargo. This platform combines the benefits of an endogenous, self-assembling system with the engineerability of a protein-based system and has the potential to enable the delivery of various genetic medicine modalities.
