GigaMune won its seventh SBIR grant, entitled “Delivery of Full Length Dystrophin to Muscle Cells for DMD Gene Therapy” from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS). The project seeks to expand the capabilities of GigaMune’s technology into delivery of curative transgenes to muscle cells. GigaMune’s Founder and CEO Dr. David Johnson is principal investigator (PI) on the project. This is Dr. Johnson’s nineteenth SBIR grant as PI.
Dr. David Johnson, Founder and CEO of GigaMune, presented the GigaMune team’s latest research on methods and compositions for discovering novel pseudotypes for virus like particle gene delivery at the 2023 CAR/TCR Summit held in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Johnson described his team’s groundbreaking methods for searching quadrillions of nucleotides of sequence data for discovery of tens of thousands of novel viral receptors which are now being engineered into virus like particles for precise delivery of genes to immune cells in vivo.
GigaMune Founder & CEO David Johnson spoke at the 2023 In Vivo Cell Engineering Conference, held in Boston in July 2023. Dr. Johnson described GigaMune’s recent advances in developing a large panel of viral pseudotypes for engineering virus-like particles to deliver genes to various kinds of immune cells. The conference included experts from Capstan, Sana, Interius, and other industry leading companies working in the field of in vivo cell engineering.
GigaMune, a new biotech based in San Francisco, recently closed a pre-seed financing round to support its initial efforts to develop novel in vivo cell therapeutics for cancer and inherited disease. GigaMune’s technology relies on methods to search quadrillions of nucleotides for proteins such as viral receptors, new technologies for artificial intelligence to optimize protein design, and high throughput screening methods for identifying lead chimeric antigen receptors (CARs), T cell receptors (TCRs), and cell tropism antibodies.
Certain intellectual property was spun out from GigaGen, but neither GigaGen nor GigaGen’s corporate parent (Grifols) has any equity stake in GigaMune. GigaMune founders include longtime colleagues Dr. David Johnson (CEO), Dr. Matt Spindler (VP Research), and Dr. Everett Meyer (clinical adviser).
Investors in the pre-seed financing include Drs. David Johnson and Matt Spindler, Boost VC, Sand Hill Angels, BioVerge, Reinforced Ventures, Newsight Tech Angels, former Genentech executives, and former Stemcentrx executives.
The terms of the financing were undisclosed.