Zürich-based Immitra Bio secures €2.58 million to scale its scalable in-vivo genetic medicine platform

Immitra Bio, a Zürich-based genetic medicine platform bringing scalability and commercial viability to gene editing therapies, has announced the completion of an upsized €2.58 million (CHF 2.4 million) pre-Seed financing round.

Venture capital and private investors contributed €2.42 million (CHF 2.25 million), while an additional €161.8k (CHF 150k) was obtained through non-dilutive funding sources. The round was led by Backbone Ventures and co-led by OCCIDENT with participation from Another VC, Kickfund, Venture Kick, Zürcher Kantonalbank, FONGIT, ETH Foundation, and select private investors.

Jan Nelis, CEO and co-founder of Immitra Bio, said, “At Immitra Bio, we are advancing a fundamentally new approach to gene editing therapies and are proud to be backed by a syndicate of early-stage and life science specialist investors. This pre-seed financing enables important value inflection points for the company and lays the foundation for establishing Immitra Bio as a leader in in-vivo gene editing. 

“Our goal is to make gene editing therapies scalable, commercially viable, and accessible to patients. Our platform has the potential to generate dozens of highly differentiated therapeutic assets in an accelerated fashion.”

Founded in 2024 by Nelis, Amir Taheri, and Jacob Corn, Immitra Bio is developing a platform for scalable, one-time curative in-vivo gene editing therapies based on its novel mutation-agnostic gene editing technology and digital target identification platform. 

The company notes that its approach is designed to overcome key limitations of current gene editing therapies by avoiding complex ex-vivo cell manipulation, patient conditioning, stem cell transplantation and personalised therapies.

According to the company, today’s approved stem cell therapies for genetic disorders are toxic, unscalable, slow, and expensive, all rooted in ex-vivo approaches. Immitra Bio claims to be developing an in-vivo alternative, a single, off-the-shelf injection that cures patients without chemotherapy or cell transplantation. 

Immitra Bio’s digital target discovery platform and novel mode of editing enables the development of off-the-shelf drug formulations designed to treat all patients within a given disease, regardless of the underlying mutation.

Paul Sunzenauer from OCCIDENT said, “Recent advances and growing market adoption of gene therapies have validated the enormous potential of curative genetic medicine. However, current approaches still face significant challenges, such as chemotherapy-related toxicities, manufacturing complexity, and limited scalability.

“Immitra Bio’s differentiated in-vivo platform is designed to address these challenges head-on. We believe that combining non-viral delivery with a mutation-independent therapeutic approach has the potential to transform the treatment of genetic diseases and make curative therapies accessible to a much larger patient population. We are impressed by the team’s bold vision and scientific excellence, and we are excited to support Immitra Bio in advancing the next generation of genetic medicines.”

This fresh capital will primarily support preclinical proof-of-concept studies for Immitra Bio’s lead candidate, IB-003, a potential one-time curative in-vivo gene editing treatment for an inherited anaemia. 

In addition, the financing will support further discovery and validation work across Immitra Bio’s select pipeline, enabled by the company’s digital target discovery platform, as well as continued refinement of the platform.