Key Points
- The company is developing a nonviral gene delivery approach that uses ultrasound to help genetic medicines reach targeted tissues.
- The funds will enable SonoThera to begin clinical trials for Duchenne muscular dystrophy and autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease.
SonoThera recently announced that it has raised $125 million in a Series B funding round led by Vida Ventures. Other investors who participated in the round were ARK Invest, CureDuchenne Ventures, Leaps by Bayer, Otsuka Pharmaceutical, SymBiosis, UCB Ventures SA, Vivo Capital, and existing investors ARCH Venture Partners, Alexandria Venture Investments, Duquesne Family Office, Illumina Ventures, Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc., Medical Excellence Capital, RA Capital, and Vertex Ventures HC.
The company plans to use the funds to begin clinical trials for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease, while also expanding its genetic medicine programs. The financing follows promising preclinical results confirming the delivery of both DNA and RNA to multiple tissues, including muscle, heart, liver, kidney, and brain.
SonoThera’s nonviral gene delivery approach uses ultrasound to help genetic medicines reach their targets. Unlike traditional gene therapies that rely on viruses, the platform is designed to allow repeat dosing, and it can overcome challenges such as limited payload size, immune reactions, and delivery constraints.
The company expects to begin its first clinical trial in DMD in 2027.
“Despite remarkable scientific progress, many diseases remain beyond the reach of today’s genetic medicines,” said Kenneth Greenberg, PhD, co-founder and chief executive officer of SonoThera. “We founded SonoThera to take a fundamentally different approach, with a platform designed to broaden the therapeutic possibilities of the field. We believe our technology has the potential to expand the range of diseases addressable by genetic medicines while enabling more precise, durable, safer, and repeatable therapies for patients.”
“This $125 million raise is a meaningful signal that the biotech investment community now sees focused ultrasound as a credible delivery modality for genetic medicine,” said Frédéric Padilla, PhD, the director of the Foundation’s Gene and Cell Therapy Program. “We hope this will trigger more interest from investors, biotech, and pharma in focused ultrasound technology. SonoThera’s nonviral approach is a great complement to viral gene therapy strategies, expanding the toolkit available to the field. Their focus on re-dosable cargos plays to one of ultrasound’s core strengths as a noninvasive, repeatable mechanism, and opens new possibilities – particularly for indications where repeat dosing changes the therapeutic strategy.”
See the SonoThera Press Release
See Media Coverage in Fierce Biotech, BioSpace, and the Wall Street Journal