$2.0 Million Grant from the New York State Biodefense Commercialization Fund
Approximately $1.0 Million Received as Sub-Awardee of Vanderbilt University Under DARPA’s Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3) Program
RenBio, our private preclinical biotech firm, announced significant funding milestones today. We have secured a $2.0 million grant from Empire State Development’s New York State Biodefense Commercialization Fund for our proposal: “Rapid Delivery of Monoclonal Antibodies for the Prevention of Future Infectious Disease Outbreaks.”
Created in 2021, the goal of the $40.0 million New York State Biodefense Commercialization Fund is to accelerate the development and commercialization of innovations targeting infectious disease threats while fostering new life science businesses and industry growth within the State.
Additionally, as a sub-awardee of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, we have received approximately $1.0 million (with an option for an additional $3.6 million) under DARPA’s Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3) program.
The goal of DARPA’s P3 program, founded in 2017, is to support military readiness and global stability through the pursuit of novel methods to dramatically accelerate discovery, integration, preclinical testing, and manufacturing of medical countermeasures against infectious diseases.
These grants will support RenBio’s pioneering MYO Technology™ platform, which aims to revolutionize antibody and protein medicines using DNA therapeutics.
“The New York State Biodefense Commercialization Fund is an important source of capital for the industry, and we are proud to be one of just eight biotechnology companies selected as an inaugural awardee out of over 100 companies that applied,” said Neal N. Padte, Ph.D., Chief Operating Officer and Chief Development Officer of RenBio. “Likewise, we are honored to collaborate with Vanderbilt University Medical Center as part of the DARPA P3 program, leveraging our disruptive MYO Technology™ to halt the spread of infectious disease outbreaks before they can escalate into pandemics.”
Rachel A. Liberatore, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer of RenBio added, “Frequent dosing regimens, specialized manufacturing, and inconvenient cold-chain requirements are limiting factors for the advancement and use of antibody and protein therapeutics, globally. The work funded by these grants will help us advance our platform validation and IND-enabling studies, and will provide further demonstration of the broad applicability of our MYO Technology™ platform for the delivery of next-generation medicines in the form of DNA therapeutics.”
Empire State Development President, CEO and Commissioner, Hope Knight, noted, “New York State’s Biodefense Commercialization Fund highlights how we are strategically investing in life science R&D and manufacturing to fuel cutting-edge healthcare solutions that will both save lives and grow jobs. We are proud to support the development of RenBio’s MYO Technology™ DNA therapeutics platform to help pinpoint and prevent serious infectious disease threats, while also growing industry innovation.”
“The rise of COVID-19 has served as a wake-up call for the need to rapidly respond to infectious disease outbreaks globally,” said James E. Crowe, Jr., MD, Ann Scott Professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center, and Principal Investigator of the DARPA P3 award. “RenBio’s platform has potential to deploy gene-encoded antibodies against future infectious disease outbreaks. We plan to use this approach as part of our DARPA P3 program in order to create an end-to-end pandemic response platform.”
About MYO Technology™
The MYO Technology™ platform is built to overcome the challenges inherent in typical antibody and protein therapeutic development, manufacturing, and delivery, by providing patients with a DNA “bioblueprint” that empowers them to produce their own therapeutic antibodies or proteins.
The technology utilizes muscle cells (myocytes), converting them into in vivo bioreactors to effectively produce the desired therapeutic within the patient’s own body, potentially leading to radically new, longer lasting therapies, negating the need for cold-chain storage and resulting in shorter manufacturing times.
About RenBio
RenBio is a privately-held, preclinical biotechnology company founded by Columbia University Professors David D. Ho, M.D. and Yaoxing Huang, Ph.D. The Company’s novel, next-generation, proprietary nucleic acid therapeutics platform, called MYO (Make Your Own) Technology™, is designed to deliver DNA medicines encoding for antibody and protein therapeutics.
The rapid plug-and-play features of the MYO Technology™ are intended to overcome antibody and protein therapeutic limitations in administration, duration of efficacy, dosing frequency, and cold-chain restrictions, and can rapidly flex to prevent or treat a broad range of diseases.
To date, the company has raised $28.0 million in Seed and Series A financing and has received non-dilutive funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Source: PR Newswire.