Funding to Accelerate Development of Innovative CRISPR-based Therapies

MILAN, ITALY / ACCESSWIRE / April 17, 2023 / Alia Therapeutics, a Trento-based start-up specializing in innovative treatments for rare genetic diseases through next-generation gene editing technology, has secured a €4.4 million seed financing extension led by Sofinnova Partners, a leading European venture capital firm with offices in Paris, London, and Milan. Other investors included Indaco Bio, a recently-launched biotech fund, and a group of Italian investors brought together by Banor SIM and Banca Profilo. The funds will bolster Alia's proprietary CRISPR technology and facilitate the company's expansion.

Alia is a spin-off of the University of Trento and was accelerated at BiovelocITA, Italy's first biotechnology accelerator co-founded in 2015 by Sofinnova Partners and serial entrepreneurs Silvano Spinelli and Gabriella Camboni. The work of Alia's scientific founder, the virologist Anna Cereseto, was named in January among the seven technologies to watch in 2023 by Nature.

"While CRISPR-Cas9 has proven extremely useful for genome editing, there is still room to improve more compact on target strategies to a wide variety of genes while preserving activity and specificity and ultimately increasing safety for human therapeutic purposes," said Paola Pozzi, Partner at Sofinnova Partners. "With these new funds, Alia will further strengthen its patent portfolio and develop its innovative platform for CRISPR-based medicine, enabling novel gene editing tailored strategies to overcome current limitations of genome editing to bring more therapies to patients with underserved and currently untreatable diseases and conditions."

"Alia's platform is already addressing the challenge of effectively screening for highly specific Cas9 variants," Silvano Spinelli, Chairman of the Board of Directors said. "This funding will help the company build its team and further boost and advance therapeutics based on gene editing into a new era."

About Alia Therapeutics

Alia Therapeutics is an Italian biotech start-up whose mission is to develop innovative treatments for incurable genetic diseases using gene editing technology. The company wasfounded in October 2018 by Anna Cereseto and a group of researchers from CIBIO, the biotech department of the University of Trento, who discovered the core CRISPR technologies exploited by the start-up.

About Sofinnova Partners

Sofinnova Partners is a leading European venture capital firm in life sciences, specializing in healthcare and sustainability. Based in Paris, London and Milan, the firm brings together a team of professionals from all over the world with strong scientific, medical and business expertise. Sofinnova Partners is a hands-on company builder across the entire value chain of life sciences investments, from seed to later-stage. The firm actively partners with ambitious entrepreneurs as a lead or cornerstone investor to develop transformative innovations that have the potential to positively impact our collective future.

Founded in 1972, Sofinnova Partners is a deeply established venture capital firm in Europe, with 50 years of experience backing over 500 companies and creating market leaders around the globe. Today, Sofinnova Partners has over €2.5 billion under management. For more information, please visit: sofinnovapartners.com.

For more information about Sofinnova Telethon, visit https://sofinnovapartners.com/strategy/telethon

Contacts

Silvano Spinelli
Chairman of the Board of Directors, Alia Therapeutics
info@aliatx.com

SOURCE: Alia Therapeutics