Recently, in Basel, Switzerland, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, RhyGaze announced the completion of an $86 million Series A financing round. The financing was led byLed by Google Ventures, Arch Venture Partners, F-Prime Capital, and founding investors BioGeneration Ventures andNovartis Venture Fund participated, and the company completed a $11 million seed financing round in July 2024.RhyGaze is named in tribute to the Rhine River (or “Rhy”) in Basel German and is proud to contribute to the biotechnology ecosystem in the Basel region.The Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel (IOB) was founded in December 2017 by the University of Basel, the University Hospital Basel, and Novartis. IOB brings together basic and clinical researchers who work hand in hand to advance the understanding of eye diseases and develop new therapies for vision loss.This funding will help further the development of RhyGaze's lead clinical candidate, a novel gene therapy for optogenetic vision restoration in blindness conditions. It will also support formal pharmacology and toxicology studies; a non-interventional observational study evaluating potential clinical endpoints in patient populations eligible for treatment; and a first-in-human clinical trial to assess the safety, tolerability, and potential efficacy of the lead candidate.
Botond Roska, scientific co-founder of RhyGaze, said:"This project embodies a key goal of IOB: to combine our deep understanding of retinal biology and vision with breakthrough technologies to develop new therapies for vision loss."Other researchers testing this therapy are pleased to see the project making progress.Bence Gyorgy, co-founder of IOB and RhyGaze, said:"We are thrilled to see this project move forward, as it uniquely offers blind patients the opportunity to regain high-resolution vision."
Katherine High, CEO of RhyGaze and former co-founder of Spark Therapeutics, stated:"Collaborating with IOB is a valuable opportunity to achieve therapeutic goals. I look forward to working with my colleagues at IOB to bring this novel gene therapy to patients, and I am excited about the team we have assembled in pursuit of this important objective. Over the next few years, RhyGaze will determine whether the compelling data generated by IOB can translate into clinical outcomes. If successful, this innovation could have a global impact on improving treatments for blindness."Follow the official account below to see the world!
