Flagship-backed startup brings in another $86.5M for ring-shaped viruses

Two years ago, Flagship Pioneering spinout Ring Therapeutics laid out a $117 million plan: to fine-tune a class of viruses for genetic medicines, identify a handful of target disease areas and double its headcount in the process.

Now, it has done all those things. So, the company has raised more money — this time, $86.5 million in a Series C round — to get to the next step, which includes new hires, some at the executive level, and beefing up preclinical research.

"What we had said we wanted to accomplish, we’ve accomplished," CEO Tuyen Ong told the Business Journal.

Ring is behind technology that allows it to engineer naturally occurring ring-shaped viruses, called "anelloviruses," as delivery vehicles for genetic medicines. Gene therapy and RNA-based medicines have typically relied on adeno-associated viruses, or AAVs, or lipid nanoparticles to get to their intended targets. There are disease areas that are not well-served by AAVs, like the central nervous system, Ong says. The CNS is one of the places Ong calls "an obvious target," along with the eye.

Other firms have already started to recognize the limitations of existing gene therapy vehicles. A number of Boston-based companies including Dyno Therapeutics, Voyager Therapeutics Inc. (Nasdaq: VYGR) and the recently launched Aera Therapeutics are working on engineering viruses and proteins of their own to fill that gap.

Ong and his team believe that anelloviruses could be superior because of their natural genetic diversity. He says preclinical research has shown that Ring can produce the anelloviruses at scale, that the viruses can be vectorized and that some of the viruses are potentially "immune-stealthy."

"If you think about the field of genetic medicines, the real big bottleneck of everything is delivery," Ong said. "We look at the anelloviruses. These are non-pathogenic viruses that have been evolved inside of us. And they have, really, superpowers."

In the time since it disclosed its $117 million Series B round, Ring has grown from 50 employees to about 110. It has published in the peer-reviewed journal Cell Host & Microbe and released other data via preprint servers, and it's presented at scientific conferences held by the European Society of Gene & Cell Therapy, the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy and the American Society for Virology. It hired its first chief scientific officer, chief regulatory officer and chief medical officer. It was also named one of the Boston Business Journal's 2022 Best Places to Work.

Alexandria Venture Investments, Altitude Life Science Ventures, CJ Investment, Flagship Pioneering, Invus, Kyowa Kirin Co., Ltd, Partners Investment, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. and UPMC Enterprises all participated.

Ong said the startup has gained inbound interest from potential collaborators who could hire Ring to develop anelloviruses for their medicines. However, Ring plans to develop its own therapies internally and work with partners in parallel.

"We don't see ourselves as a UPS of genetic material. We do have the ability of addressing some of the limitations around delivery. Other companies recognize that fact," Ong said. "Where we set out with anelloviruses, the big factor of this is how we transform healthcare."

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