DURHAM – Ribometrix, a three-year-old startup focused on the use of ribonucleic acid, a nucleic acid present in all cells known as RNA, to target disease, has closed on $30 million in new funding with two Triangle venture capital firms helping fuel the round.
Hatteras Venture Partners and Pappas Capital are among the funders. Hatteras was an earlier investor.
M Ventures, the investment arm of drug giant Merck, led the round. The Dementia Discovery Fund and Alexandria Venture Investments were among the other investors.
The funds will be used to further develop its discovery technology and a number of small molecule drugs that control and modify RNA, the company said.
The startup has already received support from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center and the National Institutes of Health.
“Novel small molecule therapies that target underlying disease mechanisms are desperately needed for high-unmet, rare/orphan as well as broader population diseases such as Huntington’s Disease, cancer, fibrosis, MS, others,” the company says.
“Targeting RNAs to treat these diseases has been of huge interest, however thus far RNAs have only partially been targeted with oligonucleotides (antisense, siRNA, microRNA) due to lack of systematic small molecule screening and design/SAR tools against RNA.”
The Ribometrix platform is based on the inventions of the company’s scientific co-founder, Kevin Weeks, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“A huge medical opportunity awaits RNA-targeting small molecules that can be designed in a systematic fashion, analogous to discovery methods currently employed for protein targets. We welcome the strong support of both new and existing leading venture investors as we pursue this exciting opportunity,” said Ribometrix CEO Michael Solomon. “With unique expertise around RNA, an expanding drug discovery team and our broad platform of complementary small molecule and RNA target discovery technologies, we are well positioned to advance a broad pipeline of compelling drug programs.”
