Ansa Biotechnologies hauled in a total of $54.4 million in an oversubscribed series B round of financing that will be used to expand the company’s DNA synthesis production capacity in the U.S.
The San Francisco-based biotech, which debuted in 2018, touts its platform as able to deliver DNA synthesis used by biopharmaceutical researchers and developers to create new diagnostics, therapeutics and other biomanufactured materials much faster and accurately than currently existing methods.
The latest financing round closed with $45.2 million and commitments for an additional $9.2 million, the company said in an Oct. 1 press release. It was led by Cerberus Ventures with participation from Blue Water Life Science Advisors, Altitude Life Science Ventures and other existing investors. New investors include Fall Line Capital, AIM13 and Black Opal Ventures.
To date, Ansa has raised more than $134 million in total fundraising.
Additionally, Chenny Zhang, director at Cerberus Ventures, and Yanniv Dorone, senior vice president at Fall Line Capital, have been added to Ansa’s board of directors.
“When you can deliver 50 kb of clonal DNA in 24 days or less, when you’re the only company bold enough to guarantee entire orders, and when you keep innovating on behalf of customers instead of protecting the status quo, you don’t just compete, you reset the rules,” Jason Gammack, Ansa’s chief executive, said in the release. “This financing is fuel for the next phase of our mission: to make DNA something scientists can count on, every single time.”
The company’s DNA synthesis was developed by co-founders Daniel Lin-Arlow, Ph.D., and Sebastian Palluk, Ph.D., and uses enzymes for a more natural process of building DNA sequences versus other methods, which may use harsh chemicals that can weaken the newly created molecules.
Ansa’s approach is different from others that typically build sequences by adding modified nucleotides one at a time. Ansa’s approach binds nucleotides to a DNA polymerase before adding them to the sequence, which the company has said provides a faster, more cost-effective synthesis.
Other companies that have followed the enzymatic path to DNA synthesis include Twist Bioscience and DNA Script.