Vesigen spawns with $28.5m series A

Vesigen Therapeutics, a US-based precision medicine developer spun out of Harvard University, has emerged from stealth with $28.5m of series A funding co-led by Leaps by Bayer, an investment vehicle for drug and chemicals producer Bayer.
Morningside Ventures co-led the round, which also attracted Alexandria Venture Investments, the strategic investment arm of life sciences real estate investment trust Alexandria Real Estate Equities, and Linden Lake Ventures.
Vesigen Therapeutics is working toward drug candidates based on fusogenic extracellular vesicles, which are responsible for signals between cells and tissues.
The vesicles will be engineered to deliver various therapeutic payloads, especially recent drug modalities that have proven challenging to apply in practice, such as gene-edited or mRNA replacement proteins.
The series A cash will go to building out Vesigen’s platform, dubbed ARRDC1-mediated microvesicles (ARMMs), to uncover potential drug candidates.
Gerald Chan, chairman and CEO of Morningside, has been appointed chairman of Vesigen, while Stephen Bruso, investment professional at Morningside, has joined the board of directors.
Vesigen has also selected Jürgen Eckhardt, head of Leaps by Bayer, and Jak Knowles, vice-president of venture investments at the same subsidiary, to serve as directors.
The spinout extends research by its scientific co-founder Quan Lu, a professor of environmental genetics and physiology at Harvard School of Public Health.
Lu said: “We engineered the ARMMs system as a platform capable of delivering several agents into specific tissues or cells that others have been exploring for years. I am hopeful that our work may enable new therapies that save lives.”