Ochre Bio raises $9.6m to advance RNA therapies for liver diseases

Biotech Ochre Bio has raised $9.6 million in a funding round to help it advance the development of its RNA therapies.

The funding round was led by Khosla Ventures alongside participants from Backed VC, Apollo Health Ventures, Selvedge, Hoxton and Hermes-Epitek.

Ochre Bio is currently developing RNA medicines for chronic liver diseases and is utilising deep phenotyping technology to uncover new biological pathways in an effort to advance the medicines its aiming to bring to market.

Phenotyping combines genetics, advanced tissue imaging, cellular genomics and machine learning to give researchers a clearer understanding of diseases and gene systems. Ochre Bio studies its medicines in human livers (kept alive on machines) to assess how successful they are in combatting disease.

The company says it has generated huge amounts of spatial genomics data through this approach, uncovering hundreds of novel potential liver targets to be validated in labs. By 2022, Ochre expects to have built a complete in silico human liver of over 10¹¹ measurements to predict the effect of perturbing any gene in any major liver cell type.

The funding will be used to advance the development of Ochre Bio’s RNA therapies and expand their deep phenotyping platform to identify and validate new liver targets.

“The convergence of new genomic technologies and machine learning allows us to digitize liver biology and develop RNA therapies at an incredible pace," said Quin Wills, chief scientific officer and co-founder, Ochre Bio. "Combining this with direct-to-human testing in human livers maintained on machines is a step-change for a field plagued by clinical failures."

“We’re delighted to attract such a strong group of investors. This financing will allow us to advance development of our therapeutic platform, as well as move products toward clinical development,” said Jack O’Meara, CEO & co-founder, Ochre Bio. “We are quickly establishing a global network of transplant partners across Europe and North America to validate candidates, and we recently opened up a Taiwanese lab to study liver disease in Asia. This funding will put us on track to developing highly efficacious and safe medicines for patients suffering from chronic liver disease. It’s a complete rethink of drug development for one of the most challenging health conditions of our time.”