Play­ground Glob­al, a16z back $26M seed for RNA edit­ing start­up aim­ing to ad­dress mul­ti­ple mu­ta­tions with sin­gle shot

The ad­vent of CRISPR tech­nolo­gies for gene edit­ing has opened up the pos­si­bil­i­ty of treat­ing ge­net­ic dis­or­ders by mak­ing pre­cise changes to pa­tients’ DNA or RNA. But two young sci­en­tists be­lieve that for the field to have a big­ger im­pact, it needs to go broad­er.

Basem Al-Shayeb and Ja­cob Bor­ra­jo are co-founders of Am­ber Bio, which is tak­ing the wraps off a $26 mil­lion seed round to test a new RNA edit­ing plat­form that they hope can make “mul­ti-kilo­base ed­its” — es­sen­tial­ly re­plac­ing whole sec­tions of RNA when need­ed. The round was co-led by Play­ground Glob­al and An­dreessen Horowitz Bio + Health, with par­tic­i­pa­tion from Eli Lil­ly, RDF (Reti­nal De­gen­er­a­tion Fund), Hum­ming­bird Ven­tures and Pil­lar VC.

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