ExcepGen, a San Francisco based biotech company, has emerged from stealth to announce $14 million in seed funding from some of the brightest investors in Silicon Valley.
Notable backers included Y Combinator, Paul Graham, RA Capital Management, Gravity Fund and Sam Altman’s Apollo Projects.
The mission of ExcepGen is boldly ambitious: to unlock a scientific breakthrough that would expand the reach of DNA based and RNA based genetic medicines.
The big idea:
- ExcepGen wants to engineer how cells interact with mRNA technology
- Through their platform, they want to be able to ‘dampen' how certain cells respond to mRNA when the outcome is undesirable while optimizing how other cells respond when the outcome is helpful
- This would allow a large breakthrough in the potential for mRNA vaccines and therapeutics, as well as being able to vastly improve patient outcomes in rare diseases
