NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Synthetic biology startup Synlogic today announced it has raised $29.4 million in Series A financing.
Atlas Ventures and New Enterprise Associates led the round. Cambridge, Mass.-based Synlogic plans to use proceeds from the raise to further develop its microbial engineering platform for developing therapeutic microbes and advancing its preclinical pipeline across clinical applications, it said.
The company was co-founded last fall by Ankit Mahadevia, a venture partner at Atlas Ventures; Jim Collins a professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University; and Timothy Lu, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and biomedical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Collins and Lu have developed tools that allow bacteria to sense physiologic conditions, perform a therapeutic action, and deactivate themselves afterward. Those tools now underlie Synlogic's pipeline of therapeutics, the company said, adding that its platform "offers a unique modality to treat diseases where traditional, systemically delivered pharmaceuticals have not been successful."
The company noted that its technology could especially have value for therapeutics directed at gastrointestinal disorders.