Atalanta Therapeutics, a Boston biotechnology company making medicines for the brain from RNA molecules, has raised $97 million to bring its first two drug candidates into clinical testing.
The Series B round announced Tuesday was co-led by EQT Life Sciences and Sanofi Ventures and involved seven other high-profile backers, including Novartis’ venture arm. Since publicly launching four years ago, the startup has now raised some $260 million, including upfront payments from partnerships with Biogen and Roche.
The funding will advance research originating from the lab of University of Massachusetts professor Craig Mello, whose work some three decades ago helped unearth a drugmaking method known as RNA interference. Medicines built this way use tiny, synthetic RNA strands to silence genes from making harmful proteins. While a handful have reached market, they’re mostly limited to disease targets in the liver.
Atalanta is part of a new generation of companies trying to broaden the reach of RNAi by delivering the medicines into other tissues. Over the last few years, companies like Switch Therapeutics, Judo Bio and City Therapeutics have emerged with twists on RNAi.
Atalanta CEO Alicia Secor, who has led the company since its founding by Mello and two other UMass researchers, said her company aims to “overcome the historical challenges” of sending oligonucleotide therapies into the brain.
The company links two small interfering RNAs together in a way that’s meant to allow them to penetrate deeply and durably into brain tissue. Atalanta claims its approach can create RNA medicines that potently impact neurological disease targets, while sidestepping some of the toxicity issues that have hampered past attempts.
“We have kind of cracked the code for delivering oligonucleotides effectively to the brain,” she said.
Atalanta hadn’t previously revealed the drugs it’s working on. Secor says the company has 10 programs in development, led by drugs for Huntington’s disease and a genetic form of epilepsy.
A progressive, neurodegenerative condition, Huntington’s has proven a tough target for drugmakers. Several experimental therapies, among them high-profile prospects from Roche and Novartis, failed in testing in the last few years.
Atalanta’s therapy, dubbed ATL-101, muffles the gene making the “huntingtin” protein, which, when misformed in people with Huntington’s, clumps up in neurons. Secor says it could succeed where others have failed because of the “sustained” and “deep brain penetration” it’s designed to achieve.
“Nothing's really worked, but nothing's really done what we are showing the ability to do,” she said.
A second drug called ATL-201, meanwhile, targets a gene called KCNT1, mutations in which can cause a form of epilepsy that can’t be controlled with anti-seizure medications. Preclinical testing suggested ATL-201 may be able to reduce the frequency of seizures, Secor said.
Atalanta is also working on therapies for chronic pain and Alzheimer’s disease.
“The universe of targets is expansive,” Secor said, “because the unmet needs in these diseases remains so high.”
Atalanta’s Series A round in 2021 was funded exclusively by F-Prime Capital.
