AIRNA raises $90 million to make RNA-editing drugs

Pharmaceutical start-up AIRNA has raised $90 million in an oversubscribed series A financing round. The firm aims to produce drugs that edit RNA transcripts in the body. AIRNA obtained an initial $30 million with support from Arch Venture Partners and the subsequent $60 million in funding through Forbion and Ono Venture Investment. The RNA-editing approach that AIRNA is developing is based on research published in 2019 by cofounders Thorsten Stafforst of the University of Tübingen and Jin Billy Li of Stanford University. They demonstrated that endogenous human proteins called ADARs (adenosine deaminases acting on RNA) can be recruited to edit specific RNA target sites using an antisense oligonucleotide. Once in place, ADARs convert the nucleoside adenosine to inosine, an atypical nucleoside that gets read by ribosomes as a guanosine. AIRNA president and CEO Kris Elverum says the company’s technology can help fix genetic mutations such as α-1 antitrypsin deficiency (AATD),