A new start­up wants to take an­ti­sense and siR­NA one step fur­ther, and build more po­tent drugs than Io­n­is and Al­ny­lam

Drug­ging RNA has be­come a hot bio­phar­ma top­ic in re­cent years, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter the mas­sive suc­cess­es of the Covid-19 vac­cines. But one biotech is aim­ing to take things a step fur­ther, uti­liz­ing the sin­gle-strand­ed mol­e­cules be­fore they even be­come RNA.

Cep­tur Ther­a­peu­tics launched Wednes­day morn­ing with a $75 mil­lion Se­ries A, the com­pa­ny an­nounced. The goal is to push for­ward a slate of oligonu­cleotide-based ther­a­pies that can con­trol gene ex­pres­sion, and even si­lence some tar­get­ed genes, at the “pre-mR­NA lev­el,” co-founder and CEO Pe­ter Ghoroghchi­an told End­points News.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER