Scribe, Jennifer Doudna’s newest startup, nabs a mega-round and a vocal investor
Nearly a decade ago, when the first CRISPR companies started looking for capital, Behzad Aghazadeh passed.
Aghazadeh, one of biotech’s more opinionated investors, had invested in gene editing before, but he had reservations about these companies: How would they navigate the patent jungle that cropped up around CRISPR-Cas9? How readily could they actually turn this bacterial-derived system into a human therapy? He maintains those concerns, even with those companies now worth over $1 billion.
Late last year, though, Aghazadeh got a message from an old colleague who had resurfaced at a new CRISPR company called Scribe. He said they were different, built around an engineering platform and a protein called CasX that could do things other editors couldn’t.
“We spent quite a lot of time diligently examining it, initially quite skeptically,” Aghazadeh said. Now, “We’re very excited.”
Avoro Capital is now leading a $100 million Series B for Scribe, joining OrbiMed, Andreessen Horowitz, RA Capital and three other firms in a mega-round for the CRISPR latecomer. The California-based biotech will use that cash to continue developing their engineering platform, while bringing forward a pipeline that includes a Biogen-partnered ALS treatment.
