TLDR:
- GRO Biosciences, a biotechnology company, raised $60.3M in Series B funding led by Atlas Venture and Access Biotechnology.
- The company plans to use the funds to advance its lead program for the treatment of refractory gout and expand its GRO platform for therapeutics production.
GRO Biosciences, a biotechnology company based in Cambridge, MA, recently closed a $60.3M Series B funding round led by Atlas Venture and Access Biotechnology. This brings the total amount raised by the company to over $90M, with participation from previous investors such as Leaps by Bayer, Redmile Group, Digitalis Ventures, and Innovation Endeavors. As part of the financing, Kevin Bitterman, PhD, Partner at Atlas Venture, and Dan Becker, MD, PhD, Managing Director at Access Biotechnology, have joined the company’s Board of Directors.
The funding will be used by GRO Biosciences to advance its lead program, ProGly-Uricase, into clinical trials for the treatment of refractory gout, a form of arthritis caused by excessive accumulation of uric acid. The company also plans to expand its GRO platform for scalable production of therapeutics incorporating non-standard amino acids (NSAAs). ProGly-Uricase, the lead program being developed by GRO Biosciences, utilizes a proprietary uricase enzyme with ProGly NSAAs to prevent the emergence of adverse reactions and allow patients to maintain effective control of serum uric acid levels.
ProGly NSAAs, which contain glycans, educate the immune system to recognize the therapy as a “self” protein, reducing the likelihood of an immune response. This technology can be applied to a variety of immunogenic therapies beyond treating gout. GRO Biosciences is also developing ProGly therapies to address autoimmune diseases without broadly suppressing the immune system, offering specific tolerance to disease-causing autoantigens.
