Aerska, a startup developing treatments to silence the problematic genes that cause various brain diseases, has raised $39 million in financing, it told STAT exclusively. The new investment came just four months after the startup raised its first pool of money, making for a back-to-back fundraising that is unusual in biotech.
Aerska, which is based in Dublin and London, is the brainchild of entrepreneur Jack O’Meara and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals alum Stuart Milstein. The biotech is centered around so-called brain shuttles that can carry larger drug molecules past the blood-brain barrier, which would normally block them.
The startup’s technology takes advantage of the fact that the highly vascularized brain is hungry for iron. Aerska creates small packages of siRNAs, a form of RNA that regulates gene expression, which are tacked onto an antibody disguised as an iron molecule. “I sometimes joke that it’s like coating our drug in Guinness, they’re so iron rich,” the Irish-born O’Meara quipped, referencing a myth that the Irish stout is a good source of the mineral. Once in the brain, the siRNAs interfere with the production of harmful proteins.
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