Tune Therapeutics, a biotech company with headquarters in Seattle and Durham, N.C., raised $175 million in one of the largest funding rounds for a Seattle-area startup in recent years.
Tune is using a pioneering technology called epigenetic editing to control gene expression without modifying the DNA sequence itself.
The startup recently launched its first clinical trials in New Zealand and Hong Kong where it’s testing an epigenetic treatment for chronic Hepatitis B. The condition afflicts more than 250 million people global and is the leading cause of liver cancer. The new funding will support these studies.
“This is a very, very novel field. You can think of this as kind of the evolution of genetic medicines,” said Akira Matsuno, Tune’s co-founder and chief financial officer.
The approach addresses the fact that many diseases and conditions are not due to the absence or presence of a genetic mutation. Instead, the ailments can be caused by the misregulation of how a gene functions, making too much or too little of a protein.
