Tessera Therapeutics, a biotech startup working on the development of new genetic medicines and treatments, has raised $230 million in a Series B round co-led by the SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation, and Altitude Life Science Ventures, with participation from other investors including the Qatar Investment Authority.

Tessera is notably a spin-off of Flagship Pioneering, the same life sciences developer that spun off Moderna, a company that has made its mark by developing a successful Covid-19 vaccine. 

Tessera formally spun off from Flagship Pioneering in July 2020 and now a few months later has closed $230 million in Series B funding. The company is pioneering a concept that it terms “Gene Writing”, referring to the ability to write therapeutic instructions into the genome to treat diseases at their source.

Tessera is aiming to develop treatments and ailments for diseases by targeting them at their very source, the genomes. It’s an ambitious venture for a biotech company and one that it’s raised big funding to now work on.

Like many biotech startups, Tessera is based in the city of Cambridge in Massachusetts. It was spun off from Flagship Pioneering, a two-decade-old life sciences incubator that’s delivered several successful biotech companies including Moderna, Kaleido Therapeutics, Denali Therapeutics, and Codiak BioSciences, the four of which are publicly-traded and collectively valued in the billions.

Hopefully, Tessera is hoping to become another success story to come out of Flagship Pioneering. With its new funding, the company will expand its team and accelerate research and development with the hopes of delivering successful therapeutic programs for clinical development.

Photo: Noubar Afeyan, Chairman and Co-Founder of Tessera Therapeutics, credit: World Economic Forum, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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