Locanabio to Shut Down by End of Year

Rare Daily Staff

Locanabio CEO Jim Burns said in a LinkedIn post that the company will shut down at the end of the year.

“While we continue to believe in the potential of our RNA-targeted gene therapy platform to deliver transformative therapies, the decision was made due to the time and capital required to deliver clinical data in the current challenging funding environment,” wrote CEO Jim Burns.

The rare disease focused preclinical biotech was developing a novel class of RNA-targeted gene therapies for genetic neuromuscular and neurodegenerative diseases, using RNA binding systems and AAV delivery to develop gene therapies with a durable effect following single administration. The company said the small size of its RNA binding systems enabled multi-targeting, allowing for targeting of multiple sites on a single or multiple RNA transcripts. Additionally, its constructs could be designed to be allele selective, targeting only the mutant allele while preserving the wild-type allele.

The company, which was founded in 2016 out of UC San Diego and previously raised $150 million in venture funding and an equity investment from Cure Duchenne, had previously downsized at the end of February, cutting 30 percent of staff to focus on its Duchenne candidate.

Photo: Jim Burns, CEO of Locanabio