Joël de Beer, Anjarium Biosciences CSO

Pfiz­er backs a small Swiss up­start's at­tempt to dis­cov­er a non-vi­ral gene ther­a­py

Joël de Beer made it just a few months in­to his PhD pro­gram at ETH Zurich be­fore he dropped out to join the hunt for the holy grail of gene ther­a­py — a non-vi­ral de­liv­ery mech­a­nism.

Now that he’s raised $61 mil­lion from some big-name back­ers — in­clud­ing Pfiz­er’s ven­ture arm — to aid that quest, the pres­sure is on.

An­jar­i­um Bio­sciences un­cloaked Thurs­day morn­ing af­ter four years in stealth mode, sport­ing a Se­ries A round co-led by Abing­worth and Gimv. The team of five has set up shop in a pic­turesque vil­lage about 40 min­utes out­side of Zurich to solve the cur­rent chal­lenges of AAV us­ing DNA-based gene vec­tors.

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