A new gene therapy player debuts in LA with 2 startup VCs at its back, AbbVie on board with a $90M cash upfront and big plans to upend the field
These days, news of a biotech breaking out of stealth mode with a healthy launch round is not all that unusual. But Capsida just might surprise you in all sorts of ways.
Backed by 2 VCs that arrived at the same CalTech scientist’s lab at about the same time, the biotech is debuting with $50 million from the investors as well as a $90 million upfront deal with AbbVie — a remarkable amount of cash for an upstart still doing discovery work. The alliance puts the pharma giant back in play in gene therapy after exiting a similar deal last year. And it gives Beth Seidenberg at Westlake Village BioPartners — allied with Versant on this startup on the $50 million A round — an important brick in the wall for the LA biotech hub she’s helping create with her new fund.
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