RARE Daily

Ring Raises $117 Million to Advance Vector Platform to Unlock Full Potential of Gene Therapy

July 28, 2021

Ring Therapeutics raised $117 million in a series B financing to expand to advance its commensal virome platform to create a pipeline of redosable vectors that can target specific tissues for a wide array of genetic diseases.

Photo: Tuyen Ong, CEO of Ring Therapeutics and CEO-partner of Flagship Pioneering

Flagship Pioneering led the financing, which included contributions by Invus, Altitude Life Science Ventures, Partners Investment, UPMC Enterprises, as well as funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates. Proceeds from the financing will be used to support the continued development and expansion of Ring’s novel vector Anellogy platform, which the company says is the first true disruption of the gene therapy space in more than 50 years since the discovery of AAV.

Founded by Flagship Labs in 2017, Ring has developed the world’s first and only anellovirus database with thousands of newly discovered anello-based vector candidates. This diverse and ubiquitous population of commensal (causing no harm) viruses live as innocuous denizens in our bodies. They have co-evolved and are present throughout the human population. Ring has built a platform to harness the unique properties of commensal anelloviruses to generate a wide array of vectors with tissue-specific tropism and the potential ability to be re-dosed.

This could lead to gene therapies and nucleic acid medicines that could potentially be given multiple times over the course of a person’s life without causing an adverse immune response. Ring’s Anellovectors can be engineered for a broad spectrum of therapeutic modalities and delivered through multiple routes of administration. Anellovirus vectors carry circular single-stranded DNA molecules that do not integrate with a person’s existing DNA, overcoming some of the key challenges and limitations of current viral gene therapy platforms and expanding the applications of nucleic acid-based treatments to enable a wider array of modalities and extend the reach of conventional gene therapy to provide more solutions to more patients.

Ring has built a fully integrated and proprietary vector bioplatform to discover and vectorize anelloviruses to produce breakthrough programmable medicines. Ultimately, the company will have a library of Anellovectors for external and internal clinical programs that may focus on oncology, cardiology, ophthalmology, CNS, rare diseases, pulmonary and beyond.

“Ring has successfully built a novel platform based on the commensal virome to create a completely new class of vector, giving us the potential to revolutionize gene therapy, a field that has historically been hindered by limited breadth, inability to re-dose, and poor tolerability,” said Tuyen Ong, CEO of Ring Therapeutics and CEO-partner of Flagship Pioneering. “With this funding, and the partnership of an exceptional group of investors joining us on this exciting journey, we are well positioned to deliver on the promise of Ring’s platform to unlock the full potential of gene therapy and deliver precision medicines.”

Author: Rare Daily Staff

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