Immitra Bio Closed a CHF 2.4 Million Pre-Seed Financing Round

The ETHZ spinoff and Geneva-based company aims to replace complex stem cell transplantation procedures with a single injection, making potentially curative therapies more accessible to patients worldwide.

CHF 2.25 million was provided by venture capital and private investors, with an additional CHF 150k secured through non-dilutive funding sources. The round was led by Backbone Ventures and co-led by OCCIDENT with participation from Another VC, Kickfund, Venture Kick, Zürcher Kantonalbank, FONGIT, ETH Foundation, and select private investors.

Immitra Bio is developing a platform for scalable, one-time curative in-vivo gene editing therapies based on its novel mutation agnostic gene editing technology and digital target identification platform. The company’s approach is designed to overcome key limitations of current gene editing therapies by avoiding complex ex-vivo cell manipulation, patient conditioning, stem cell transplantation and personalized therapies. The proceeds from the pre-seed round will primarily support preclinical proof-of-concept studies for Immitra Bio’s lead candidate, IB-003, a potential one-time curative in-vivo gene editing treatment for an inherited anemia. In addition, the financing will support further discovery and validation work across Immitra Bio’s select pipeline, enabled by the company’s digital target discovery platform, as well as continued refinement of the platform.

“At Immitra Bio, we are advancing a fundamentally new approach to gene editing therapies and are proud to be backed by a syndicate of early-stage and life science specialist investors. This pre-seed financing enables important value inflection points for the company and lays the foundation for establishing Immitra Bio as a leader in in-vivo gene editing. Our goal is to make gene editing therapies scalable, commercially viable, and accessible to patients. Our platform has the potential to generate dozens of highly differentiated therapeutic assets in an accelerated fashion,” said Jan Nelis, CEO and Co-Founder of Immitra Bio.

“We were impressed by both the team and the technology. Jan and Amir combine deep scientific expertise with complementary entrepreneurial, scale-up and big pharma experience, and came highly recommended by everyone we spoke to. Their elegant approach to mutation agnostic gene editing has the potential to overcome important limitations of current gene editing technologies and could enable a broad platform across multiple genetic diseases”, said Philippe Bernet, Managing Partner at Backbone Ventures.

“Recent advances and growing market adoption of gene therapies have validated the enormous potential of curative genetic medicine. However, current approaches still face significant challenges, such as chemotherapy-related toxicities, manufacturing complexity, and limited scalability,” said Paul Sunzenauer from OCCIDENT. “Immitra Bio’s differentiated in-vivo platform is designed to address these challenges head-on. We believe that combining non-viral delivery with a mutation-independent therapeutic approach has the potential to transform the treatment of genetic diseases and make curative therapies accessible to a much larger patient population. We are impressed by the team’s bold vision and scientific excellence, and we are excited to support Immitra Bio in advancing the next generation of genetic medicines.”

➡️ Source | 📸 Co-founders Jan Nelis (CEO), Prof. Jacob Corn (Scientific Advisor), and Amir Taheri (CSO), © Venturelab