Caribou Biosciences, a developer of CRISPR-Cas9 technologies for precision cell engineering, today announced that it has closed an $11 million Series A financing round. Investors include Fidelity Biosciences, Novartis, Mission Bay Capital, 5 Prime Ventures, and an undisclosed strategic partner. In addition, Dr. Jennifer Doudna, Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Professor, U.C. Berkeley and co-founder of Caribou, also joined the round as an investor.

"We are delighted to have attracted such an impressive group of investors that share our enthusiasm for the vast potential of our proprietary CRISPR-Cas9-based cell engineering platform," said Rachel Haurwitz, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Caribou Biosciences. "This funding will allow us to further accelerate deployment of our advanced genome editing platform, which enables simple, flexible targeting of any site in a given genome, in a number of focus areas including therapeutic research and development, agricultural biotechnology and industrial biotechnology."

Caribou's technologies are based on research into the biology of CRISPR-Cas systems carried out by the Doudna Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, and their collaborators. At the core of Caribou's extensive CRISPR technologies IP portfolio is an exclusive license to the foundational CRISPR-Cas9 work from the University of California and the University of Vienna. This work was recently recognized by the award of a Breakthrough Prize to Dr. Doudna and her collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier, Helmholtz Center for Infection Research and Umeå University.

Caribou is advancing its CRISPR-Cas9 technology platform through relationships with companies in multiple market sectors. Illustrative of this approach, Caribou recently announced a collaboration agreement with Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research under which the two companies will utilize Caribou's proprietary CRISPR-Cas9 platform to research new CRISPR-based drug target screening and validation technologies. In 2014, Caribou co-founded Intellia Therapeutics, which is utilizing Caribou's technology platform in the discovery, development and commercialization of human gene and cell therapies.

"CRISPR-Cas9 technology for gene editing is one of the most promising areas of scientific research today and Caribou, through its early work and its initial partnerships, has been a leader in this rapidly emerging field," remarked Robert Weisskoff, Ph.D., a partner at Fidelity Biosciences and newly appointed member of Caribou's Board of Directors. "We look forward to helping support the company as it continues to translate the promise of its platform across the enormously broad spectrum of commercial applications."