Biotechnology company SonoThera has raised $125 million in an oversubscribed Series B financing round. The financing was led by Vida Ventures, with participation from ARK Invest, CureDuchenne Ventures, Leaps by Bayer, Otsuka Pharmaceutical, SymBiosis, UCB Ventures SA, Vivo Capital, and existing investors ARCH Venture Partners, Alexandria Venture Investments, Duquesne Family Office, Illumina Ventures, Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Medical Excellence Capital, RA Capital, and Vertex Ventures HC.

SonoThera will use the funds to advance its lead programs in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) in the clinic. The funds will also support efforts to expand its pipeline of targeted redosable genetic medicines across multiple organ systems and scale its proprietary platform technologies for safe, targeted therapy delivery.

The company’s platform combines a proprietary ultrasound-mediated delivery technology dubbed RIPPLE, with a payload engineering platform dubbed PORE. The platforms are designed to support the development of DNA and RNA therapeutics, gene editing, and gene silencing approaches. SonoThera is using its tech to develop genetic medicines that it claims will address key limitations of conventional gene therapies including delivery challenges, payload size constraints, immune responses, safety events, and difficulties with redosing. 

As Kenneth Greenberd, PhD, SonoThera’s co-founder and CEO, stated “we founded SonoThera to take a fundamentally different approach, with a platform designed to broaden the therapeutic possibilities of the field. We believe our technology has the potential to expand the range of diseases addressable by genetic medicines while enabling more precise, durable, safer, and repeatable therapies for patients.”

SonoThera has already demonstrated the targeted delivery and expression capabilities of its platform across multiple tissues, including skeletal muscle, heart, liver, kidney, adipose, and brain. It has also shown that it can deliver large payloads such as full-length dystrophin for DMD and RNA-based payloads for gene silencing applications in preclinical studies. 

The company expects to initiate its first clinical trial in DMD in 2027.

Commenting on the financing, Rajul Jain, MD, managing director at Vida Ventures, said “we believe SonoThera, with its RIPPLE delivery and PORE payload engineering technologies, has the potential to unlock opportunities in diseases with significant unmet need that have been previously inaccessible to other genetic medicine approaches.” 

In connection with the financing, Jain and Rakhshita Dhar, MS, vice president & head of Healthcare Venture Investments at Leaps by Bayer, have joined SonoThera’s Board of Directors.

The post SonoThera Raises $125M to Develop Ultrasound-Mediated Genetic Medicines appeared first on GEN – Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.

Hired someone new and exciting? Promoted a rising star? Finally solved that hard-to-fill spot? Share the news with us, and we’ll share it with others. That’s right. Send us your changes, and we’ll find a home for them. Don’t be shy. Everyone wants to know who is coming and going.

And here is our regular feature in which we highlight a different person each week. This time around, we note that AstronauTx hired Michelle Mellion as chief medical officer. Previously, she held the same role at PepGen and EveryONE Medicines.

But all work and no play can make for a dull chief medical officer.

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And so, another working week will soon draw to a close. Not a moment too soon, yes? This is, you may recall, our treasured signal to daydream about weekend plans. Our agenda includes promenading with the official mascots, catching another round of live musical vibes here and there, and taking pride in some folks who are dear to us. We also hope to hold yet another listening party, where the rotation will likely include this, this, this, this and this. And what about you? This is a wonderful time of year to sample the many outdoor activities popping up — street fairs, festivals, and all sorts of gatherings can be sampled. If the weather fails to cooperate, though, you could curl up with a good book, sit in front of the telly to take in one or more sporting events, or plan a needed getaway. If none of this strikes your fancy, you could simply park yourself somewhere comfortable for a while and remain zen. Well, whatever you do, have a grand time. But be safe. Enjoy, and see you soon. …

In a rare move, the nonprofit organization Blood Cancer United announced it was buying the remaining supplies of Luvelta, a discontinued investigational cancer drug, STAT reports. As part of the transaction, Blood Cancer United, previously known as the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, also will acquire the investigational new drug designation and manage the compassionate-use program for children with a rare form of blood cancer, distributing the medication to patients at no cost while supplies last. Sutro Biopharma discontinued development in March 2025 and also eliminated a compassionate use program.

Novo Nordisk identified a security incident in which certain information, ​including patient data from some clinical trials, was copied externally without ‌authorization from its internal IT systems, Reuters notes. The company said it launched a probe with the assistance of external ​cybersecurity experts and is in contact with the relevant authorities. The potential categories of ​personal data affected may include patient ID, year of birth, sex, and health or immunogenicity data among others. Novo did not provide further details, but does not ‌believe ⁠the incident will enable any third party to identify participants in its clinical trials.

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