March 6, 2018

Fresh on the heels of the release of its new CRISPR enzyme, gene-editing company Inscripta has announced the close of a $55.5 million Series C funding round. The round was led by Mérieux Développement and Paladin Capital Group, and included all existing Inscripta investors – Venrock, Foresite, MLS Capital, and NanoDimension. Inscripta will use the funding to expand its research capabilities and strengthen its workforce.

In a press release, Kevin Ness, CEO of Inscripta, said, “Gene editing is one of the most exciting scientific advancements of this young century, but to realize its full potential, researchers need to have better, more scalable tools to forward engineer proteins, pathways and genomes. The past 20 years of genomic advancements have been in the field of genome reading, but we believe that future advancements in biology will be in the applications of genome writing.”

Inscripta is a gene-editing technology company that provides both CRISPR enzymes for use by researchers, and gene-editing tools instruments, reagents, and software.

CRISPR

CRISPR-Cas9 enables geneticists and researchers to edit parts of a genome by removing, adding, or altering sections of the DNA sequence. The primary benefits of the technology are that it is very inexpensive, easy to use, and compresses the development cycle – especially in agriculture, which has been altering the traits of plants and animals for millennia in ways that are for more time consuming and farm less precise.

Farmers and agribusinesses are currently working on scores of gene-edited crops to not only increase yields, resistance to drought, and insect tolerance but also to positively impact nutrition and  even taste.

“Inscripta is unique in building the best set of tools that allow researchers and industrial players to engineer strains and enzymes, while owning the fruits of their results outright. As the company prepares for the next set of breakthroughs and first commercial launch, we are excited to work with a very talented team to accelerate what we consider will be a game changer for the industry,” said François Valencony, general manager at Merieux Développement.

By David Nitchman, GAI Media