Gemini Raises $42.5M to Develop Precision Therapeutics in Eye and Rare Genetic Diseases

Rare Daily Staff

Gemini Therapeutics said it raised a $42.5 million series A venture round to fund its efforts to advance to the clinic new treatments for age-related macular degeneration and associated rare genetic diseases.

Atlas Venture, Lightstone Ventures, and OrbiMed co-led the series A round. All three had provided seed financing to the company in 2016.

Gemini is developing first-in-class therapeutics built on the foundation of human genetics research in AMD, the leading cause of irreversible blindness in the United States and European Union. Research over the last decade has uncovered genetic variants that can increase risk of developing advanced AMD by up to 20-fold, while also increasing the likelihood of systemic morbidities.

Gemini said its pipeline spans three genetically-defined targets, seven research projects, one development program and three biologic modalities, including monoclonal antibodies, recombinant proteins, and gene therapies. It did not identify the specific rare diseases it is targeting, but said it is focusing on regulatory proteins in the complement system, part of the immune system, to address a spectrum of loss-of-function mutations linked to the risk of AMD and rare complement-mediated diseases.

“We believe the time is right to harness genetic insights into AMD, and we’ve gathered the people, the technology and the resources necessary to lead the translational effort,” said James McLaughlin, CEO, president and co-founder of Gemini Therapeutics. “To build our pipeline, we focused on patients first – particularly patients with a high genetic risk profile. We assessed the functional implications of their underlying mutations. We then matched each molecular abnormality with an appropriate therapeutic candidate: a recombinant protein, a monoclonal antibody or a gene therapy.”

October 22, 2017