Seamless Launches with $12.5 Million to Advance Gene Editing Platform Based on Programmable Recombinases

Rare Daily Staff

Seamless Therapeutics raised $12.5 million (€11.8 million) in a seed financing round to accelerate further development of its designer recombinases, a novel gene editing platform to transform the treatment of severe diseases.

The company’s pioneering recombinase platform is able to program a widely used and established molecular biology tool to unlock the full potential of gene editing enabling the targeting of any site within the genome.

Wellington Partners and Forbion co-led the financing that includes non-dilutive financing from BMBF GO-Bio, a German government initiative aimed at supporting the most innovative startups in the life sciences. Representatives from both Wellington and Forbion will join the company’s newly formed board of directors.

The proceeds from the round will be used to further advance the company’s proprietary technology platform to build a pipeline of therapeutic candidates towards first-in-human readiness as well as to expand the company’s presence in the European Union and the United States.

Seamless Therapeutics was founded based on ground-breaking discoveries from its scientific founders, Frank Buchholz, dean of research at the Faculty of Medicine and head of Medical Systems Biology at the University Cancer Center of the Technische Universität Dresden, and Felix Lansing, co-founder and chief scientific officer of Seamless Therapeutics. Both are pioneers in reprogramming recombinases. Felix Lansing will be responsible for the continued development of the company’s proprietary technology.

“Our goal is to apply our deep understanding of recombinases to leverage their inherent benefits to repair genetic alterations that cause disease,” said Anne-Kristin Heninger, co-founder and CEO of Seamless Therapeutics. “We believe our pioneering technology will allow us to shatter the boundaries that exist in gene editing methods today.”

Seamless Therapeutics’ platform has succeeded in reprogramming site specific recombinases to any given target sequence and make a range of specific changes including inversion, excision, exchange, and insertion from small to larger DNA fragments. Recombinases are a class of enzymes that have been widely used in scientific research for decades to precisely modify the genome of model organisms but until now could not be applied as a therapeutic due to their limited programmability to act on new target sites.

“Our modular platform has succeeded in reprogramming site-specific recombinases to any given target sequence effectively breaking the existing hurdles of leveraging this potential best-in-class gene editing system to treat human disease,” said Felix Lansing, co-founder and chief scientific officer of Seamless Therapeutics.

Photo: Anne-Kristin Heninger, co-founder and CEO of Seamless Therapeutics