Beacon Therapeutics, an Oxford, UK-based ophthalmic gene therapy company, raised $120M in funding.
The round saw participation from Syncona Limited, with additional investors including Oxford Science Enterprises.
The company intends to use the funds to progress its pipeline to key value inflection points.
Led by a highly experienced leadership team including David Fellows, Dr. Nadia Waheed, and Dr. Abraham Scaria, each with decades of ophthalmic gene therapy experience, Beacon Therapeutics is an ophthalmic gene therapy company founded in 2023 to restore and improve the vision of patients with a range of prevalent and rare retinal diseases that result in blindness. Its lead development candidate AGTC-501, is a gene therapy program in Phase II clinical trials for the treatment of XLRP, an inherited monogenic recessive disorder that causes progressive vision loss in boys and young men. XLRP is predominantly caused by mutations in the retinitis pigmentosa GTPase regulator (RPGR) gene. AGTC-501 expresses the full length RPGR protein, thereby addressing the full complement of photoreceptor damage caused by XLRP, including both rod and cone loss.
The second pre-clinical asset is targeting cone-rod dystrophy (CRD) which is caused by a null mutation in the Cadherin Related Family Member 1 (CDHR1) gene. The program has been licensed from the laboratory of Professor Robert MacLaren, Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Oxford. Prof. MacLaren, a retinal expert and an experienced biotech company founder and a Co-Founder of Beacon Therapeutics, will become a key scientific advisor to the company and will join the board of directors.
The company has a new location in London, UK, complementing existing facilities in Boston, Massachusetts and Alachua, Florida, US.
FinSMEs
12/06/2023