Jul 15, 2021 - Economy

Gene-editing startup Prime Medicine raises $200 million

Dan Primack

DNA strand — Illustration: Rebecca Zisser/Axios

Prime Medicine, a Cambridge, Mass.-based gene-editing startup co-founded by biochemist David Liu, raised $200 million in Series B funding and disclosed that it raised $115 million in Series A funding.

Why it matters: Liu is one of the foremost CRISPR innovators, first investing in "base editing" in 2016 and then "prime editing" in 2019. It's that latter effort that's the basis of Prime Medicine, and basically acts as a sort of word processor for potentially editing a larger number of genes without triggering some of CRISPR's more troublesome reactions.

Investors include Arch Venture Partners, F-Prime Capital, GV, Newpath Partners, Casdin Capital, Cormorant, Moore Strategic Ventures, PSP Investments, Redmile Group, Samsara BioCapital and T. Rowe Price.

The bottom line: "Prime editing can ... insert, delete or replace long stretches of DNA. And it can do so in any cell type and any spot on the genome. Other CRISPR systems can only operate in regions of the genome where there are essentially molecular anchors to tether themselves." — Jason Mast, EndpointsNews

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Gene-editing startup Prime Medicine raises $200 million

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