10 October 2019 - - US-based venture capital firm Atlas Venture has launched Korro Bio, Inc., a new company created to lead the rapidly advancing field of RNA editing, the firm said.

The company was co-founded and incubated by Atlas, with additional funding from New Enterprise Associates, Inc.

Gene-editing industry veterans Nessan Bermingham, Ph.D., and Andrew Fraley, Ph.D., formed Korro Bio around a new product platform to create therapies with unique and best-in-class product profiles.

The foundational technology behind Korro Bio holds the promise to overcome many of the challenges associated with earlier-generation gene-editing approaches, including efficiency, selectivity and delivery.

Korro Bio's platform originated from pioneering research in the laboratory of company co-founder Josh Rosenthal, Ph.D., from the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., an affiliate of the University of Chicago.

Dr. Rosenthal's landmark discoveries in RNA editing are based on nucleotide deamination, an endogenous process for modifying RNA function that is common to all multicellular organisms.

Atlas Partner and company co-founder Jean-François Formela, M.D., serves on the MBL Council, where he and Dr. Rosenthal met in 2017 and began discussions that led to the formation of Korro Bio.

Korro Bio and the Rosenthal Lab have established an active collaboration to advance this foundational science.

Korro Bio's proprietary RNA-editing approach leverages endogenous human-expressed RNA-editing enzymes in the family of adenosine deaminase acting on RNA.

The ADAR platform at Korro Bio has multiple potential advantages over existing gene editing platforms, including the ability to utilise both endogenous or exogenous effector proteins; the potential for highly efficient and allele-specific RNA editing; the use of multiple delivery technologies; and the potential for titratable, repeat dosing.

The company is prioritising multiple therapeutic indications where safe and targeted editing of messenger RNA using its ADAR-based platform is poised to provide unique benefits over other modalities in development, including gene therapy and gene editing approaches.

Korro Bio was created to lead the field of RNA editing.

The company is advancing a proprietary platform designed to selectively edit messenger RNA and recode specific codons to effect changes in protein structure and function across multiple tissues. Korro Bio was established in 2018 by Atlas Venture.