NEW YORK – Molecular Assemblies today announced it has raised $12.2 million in Series A financing.
The iSelect Fund led the round, joined by existing investors Agilent Technologies, Alexandria Venture Investments, Keshif Ventures. San Diego-based Molecular Assemblies said it will use the proceeds to advance its enzymatic DNA synthesis technology.
"Enzymatic DNA synthesis is the optimal way to create a cost-effective, sustainable, and scalable integrated system that stores and reads information in DNA," Mike Kime, managing director, iSelect Fund, said in a statement. "With a proprietary technology position, Molecular Assemblies' novel enzymatic DNA synthesis platform has the potential to fundamentally transform how we create DNA on demand to enable breakthroughs in life sciences, information storage, synthetic biology, and electronics."
Molecular Assemblies has created a two-step enzymatic DNA synthesis process that can deliver long, pure DNA without a template, on demand. It's one of several teams that are working on enzymatic DNA synthesis methods, including Ansa Biotechnologies and DNA Script. An enzymatic process, in theory, would allow longer oligos and would be less likely to damage the DNA than established chemical methods. In 2018, the firm claimed to be able to store and retrieve digital information in DNA using its process.
"Our ability to reliably, affordably, and sustainably produce long, high-quality DNA can accelerate life science research and transform the information storage industry by enabling integrated systems that can write and read DNA data," Molecular Assemblies President and CEO Michael Kamdar said in a statement.
The firm raised $2.3 million in seed funding in 2016 from Agilent, Cavendish Impact Capital Fund, Eleven Two Capital, Keshif Ventures, Genomics Investment Syndicate, Newport Holdings, and Alexandria Venture Investments.