NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Startup Celsius Therapeutics said today that it has raised $65 million in a Series A financing round.
The round was led by Third Rock Ventures, with participation from GV (formerly Google Ventures), Heritage Provider Network, Casdin Capital, Alexandria Venture Investments, and others.
The company plans to combine single-cell genomic sequencing of defined patient samples and computational analysis of massive datasets with complex algorithms to discover therapies for autoimmune diseases and cancer. The goal is to pick out specific cells that play a key role in disease and identify the genes that trigger their malfunction, allowing the company "to more efficiently identify specific targets for treating diseases in specific patients and ultimately develop medicines for those targets."
Celsius was cofounded by Aviv Regev, a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a core institute member, chair of the faculty, and director of the Klarman Cell Observatory at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
The company has licensed technologies from the Broad Institute that are based on work by Regev and by Vijay Kuchroo, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and an associated Broad member. This includes non-exclusive licenses to single-cell technologies and an exclusive license to early-stage therapeutic programs.