Ring Therapeutics Raises $86.5 Million in Series C Funding to Create Next Generation Programmable Medicines

– Ring raised a total of $86.5 million from new and returning investors, validating its unique approach to creating next-generation programable genetic medicines –

– The proceeds from this raise will further advance its Anellogy™ platform toward the clinic, transforming commensal anelloviruses into life-saving therapies –  

Cambridge, Mass. – Mar. 9, 2023 – Ring Therapeutics, a life sciences company founded by Flagship Pioneering to revolutionize gene therapy with its commensal virome platform, today announced that it raised $86.5 million in Series C funding, bringing its total funds raised to date to $230 million. Investors included Alexandria Venture Investments; Altitude Life Science Ventures; CJ Investment; Ring’s founder, Flagship Pioneering; Invus; Kyowa Kirin Co., Ltd; Partners Investment; funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc.; UPMC Enterprises, and others including all of Ring’s existing institutional shareholders.

“This raise underlines our goal to progress the potentially transformative therapeutics from our Anellogy platform towards the patients that need them,” said Tuyen Ong, MD, MBA, Chief Executive Officer at Ring and CEO-Partner at Flagship Pioneering. “With the recent appointment of our first CMO, Christopher Wright, coupled with our extensive portfolio of published preclinical studies showcasing expansive anellovirus diversity, immune evasion, tissue-specific tropism and in vitro particle synthesis, we are poised to launch our anellovirus-based therapies toward the clinic. This exceptional group of new and returning investors will fuel our continued rapid progress toward our first AnelloVector IND filing to address delivery needs in genetic medicines and bring these potentially life-saving therapies to patients in need.”

Commensal anelloviruses have co-habited and co-evolved with humans over millions of years, yet they have remained largely understudied and untapped. Ring has developed the world’s first and only platform, the Anellogy™ platform, to discover and harness the unique characteristics of these viruses as programmable medicines capable of delivering a wide array of payloads including DNA and RNA in a highly-tropic, redosable manner. Through its Anellogy™ platform, Ring has developed the largest anellovirus database to date, having sequenced and identified over 5,000 anelloviruses from human samples. Ring has already begun harnessing this expansive diversity which offers tremendous optionality with respect to tissue- and cellular-level tropism, vectorization, in vitro assembly and paradigm-shifting manufacturing modularity.

Co-Founder and Chairman of Ring and General Partner at Flagship Pioneering, Avak Kahvejian, Ph.D., added, “By harnessing the human commensal virome, Ring’s unique approach has been a true disruption of the genetic medicine space and offers the opportunity to generate a plethora of novel vectors with tissue-specific tropism and the potential to be redosed. We appreciate the continued support of our current investors and are excited to welcome the support of this new group of investors as we take our next strides toward creating programmable medicines that have the potential to so widely impact human health.”