Ring Therapeutics, a life sciences company founded by Flagship Pioneering, has raised $86.5 million in Series C funding, bringing its total funds raised to $230 million. The funding round included investors such as Alexandria Venture Investments, Altitude Life Science Ventures, CJ Investment, Kyowa Kirin Co., Ltd, Partners Investment, and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., among others. Ring’s founder, Flagship Pioneering, also participated in the funding round.
Ring Therapeutics aims to revolutionize gene therapy with its commensal virome platform, which focuses on anelloviruses to potentially treat a broad range of diseases. The company’s Anellogy™ platform generates diverse vectors that exhibit both tissue-specific tropism and the potential to be redosed. Ring has developed the largest anellovirus database to date, having sequenced and identified over 5,000 anelloviruses from human samples. Through its platform, Ring is poised to launch its anellovirus-based therapies toward the clinic.
“We are poised to launch our anellovirus-based therapies toward the clinic,” said Tuyen Ong, MD, MBA, Chief Executive Officer at Ring and CEO-Partner at Flagship Pioneering. “This exceptional group of new and returning investors will fuel our continued rapid progress toward our first AnelloVector IND filing to address delivery needs in genetic medicines and bring these potentially life-saving therapies to patients in need.”
Avak Kahvejian, Ph.D., Co-Founder and Chairman of Ring and General Partner at Flagship Pioneering, added, “By harnessing the human commensal virome, Ring’s unique approach has been a true disruption of the genetic medicine space and offers the opportunity to generate a plethora of novel vectors with tissue-specific tropism and the potential to be redosed.”
Ring’s Anellogy™ platform, which focuses on harnessing the unique properties of commensal viruses, offers tremendous optionality with respect to tissue- and cellular-level tropism, vectorization, in vitro assembly, and manufacturing modularity. With the recent appointment of Ring’s first CMO, Christopher Wright, and its extensive portfolio of published preclinical studies showcasing expansive anellovirus diversity, immune evasion, and in vitro particle synthesis, the company is well-positioned to create programmable medicines capable of delivering a wide array of payloads including DNA and RNA in a highly-tropic, redosable manner.
