NEW YORK – Enzymatic RNA synthesis company EnPlusOne Biosciences said Thursday that it has inked a partnership with the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University to help develop disease-agnostic immunotherapeutic RNAs.
EnPlusOne will participate in a research initiative led by the Wyss Institute that has been awarded up to $27 million by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). Up to $3.5 million of the award will focus on EnPlusOne’s enzymatic RNA synthesis platform, the company said.
Researchers from the Wyss Institute and their collaborators aim to develop a novel RNA therapeutic with the potential to treat various diseases, including different cancer types and infectious diseases, according to EnPlusOne. They will leverage so-called duplex RNA technology and RNA delivery capabilities developed by scientists at the Wyss Institute, along with the enzymatic RNA synthesis capabilities from EnPlusOne to optimize the RNA’s design and scalability.
"This comprehensive program will give us the opportunity to demonstrate how enabling modifications and limitless scale can be unlocked by our ezRNA platform," EnPlusOne Cofounder and Chief Operating Officer Dan Ahlstedt said in a statement. "We are grateful to the Wyss Institute and ARPA-H for recognizing the current problems facing RNA manufacturing and sharing our vision that an enzymatic approach is the future."
Based in Watertown, Massachusetts, EnPlusOne is a spinout from the Wyss Institute to commercialize an enzymatic RNA synthesis technology developed in the lab of George Church, a company cofounder. EnPlusOne holds an exclusive license for the RNA enzymatic synthesis technology from the Wyss Institute and raised $12 million in seed funding in 2022.