Arbor Biotech Emerges from Stealth Mode, Announces $15.6M Series A
The Cambridge biotech startup co-founded by gene editing pioneer Feng Zhang has now come out of stealth mode by announcing its discovery of a new enzyme, Cas13d, in addition to its $15.6 million series A funding.
Cas13d, was discovered using Arbor’s proprietary platform which enables the high-throughput discovery and identification of enzymes that provide new protein functionalities and catalytic activities. The enzyme is significantly smaller than other members of the CRISPR-Cas13 family and has exciting implications for applications such as RNA manipulation and highly sensitive diagnostics.
The discovery of CRISPR-Cas13d represents the first significant milestone for Arbor’s discovery pipeline and illustrates the benefit of scaling protein characterization. The Company will continue to leverage its discovery platform to identify and optimize proteins to establish novel biotechnologies for improving human health and sustainability.
The financing round was led by Keith Crandell of ARCH Venture Partners and Annie Hazlehurst of Faridan Ventures, with the participation of several private investors.
Launched in 2016 by co-founders including CRISPR pioneer Feng Zhang and Illumina Inc. and Quanterix Corp. co-founder David Walt, Arbor has a genome screening platform to identify new natural proteins and peptides with potential medical, agricultural and industrial applications. The platform combines a set of AI, genome
sequencing, gene synthesis and high-throughput screening technologies.“Arbor’s revolutionary platform accelerates the rate of discovery and characterization of new biomolecules by orders of magnitude,” said Arbor founder David Scott.
“We are now at the cusp of being able to convert sequence data into a catalog of protein functions. The possibilities are limitless,” added Arbor founder Winston Yan.
Keith Crandell, co-founder and Managing Director, ARCH Venture Partners, said, “The stellar scientific team and technological capabilities that Arbor has assembled will undoubtedly lead to transformative discoveries in a wide range of commercial sectors. ARCH is thrilled to support the company as it pushes the boundaries of computer science and biodiscovery.”
