Tenaya Therapeutics Secures $92M Series B Financing to Advance Three-Platform Pipeline for Heart Disease Therapies

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) has learned that Tenaya Therapeutics, a company dedicated to discovering, developing, and delivering therapies targeting the underlying causes of heart disease, announced the successful completion of a $92 million Series B financing round. The proceeds from this round will be used to advance and expand Tenaya’s product pipeline and strengthen its intellectual property position, laying the foundation for its multimodal product platform encompassing cellular regeneration, gene therapy, and precision medicine.

Reportedly, this funding round was led by Casdin Capital, with participation from GV, The Column Group, and other undisclosed new and existing investors. Eli Casdin, Chief Investment Officer of Casdin Capital, will join the board of directors of Tenaya Therapeutics, while Dr. Anthony Philippakis, Venture Partner at GV, will serve as a board observer.

Since its founding in October 2016 by scientists from the Gladstone Institutes and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Tenaya has raised $142 million.

Chief Executive Officer Faraz Ali stated, “We now have abundant resources to leverage our capabilities in research and manufacturing, accelerating the development and clinical translation of lead gene therapy and small-molecule programs targeting orphan diseases and prevalent cardiovascular conditions. We are delighted to have a group of experienced investors, led by Casdin Capital and The Column Group, who support Tenaya’s potential to transform the treatment of heart failure, which is currently a leading cause of death worldwide.”

Tenaya is advancing best-in-class candidates from three distinct platforms: cardiac regeneration, gene therapy, and precision medicine. The cardiac regeneration platform employs novel adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors to deliver proprietary transcription factors that reprogram resident cardiac fibroblasts into cardiomyocytes in vivo. The gene therapy platform utilizes AAV vectors for targeted delivery and expression of therapeutic payloads to specific cells within the heart, with a focus on treating genetically defined cardiomyopathies. The precision medicine platform leverages homologous iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes as human disease models to identify and validate novel heart failure targets and screen therapeutic compounds.

Tenaya Therapeutics, Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company whose mission is to discover, develop, and deliver potential therapies targeting the underlying causes of heart disease. Tenaya is advancing multiple drug candidates from three product platforms: cell regeneration, gene therapy, and precision medicine. Headquartered in South San Francisco, California, Tenaya was co-founded by the Cardiovascular Institute at Gladstone Institutes and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

(Compiled by Ning Chen)