Founders: David Hallal (CEO), Vikas Sinha, Mitchell Finer
Launched:Â 2019
Headquarters:Â Waltham, Massachusetts
Funding: $1.3 billion
Valuation: N/A
Key technologies: N/A
Industry: Biotech
Previous appearances on Disruptor 50 List: 2 (No. 26 in 2023)
In a banner 2023, life sciences company ElevateBio struck new biotech R&D collaborations with a former No. 1 Disruptor, Moderna, and high-flying drug company Novo Nordisk, closed a $401 million financing round, and broke ground on a manufacturing facility at the University of Pittsburgh through a $100 million RK Mellon Foundation grant.
Based in the biotech hub of Boston, the innovator is scaling transformative CRISPR technologies at the forefront of bioscience breakthroughs in gene editing for cancer, lupus, strokes, diabetes and other diseases. ElevateBio is aiming to speed up development through expanded partnerships with more than 20 biopharma companies and more investment in its BaseCamp drug discovery and manufacturing platform.
Co-founded in 2017 by 30-year pharma industry veteran David Hallal, ElevateBio is challenging traditional therapeutics development that rely on a patchwork of technologies. Its strength is as a one-stop shop for development and manufacturing, in a field with plenty of pioneering competition, such as Beam Therapeutics and CRISPR Therapeutics.
As a differentiator, ElevateBio has mastered the integration of complex manufacturing and technologies to advance the development and production of gene therapies. It works on its own products, and its partners' discoveries, including Novo Nordisk, Moderna, recent publicly traded newcomer Kyverna, and biotech startups.
Last year, ElevateBio took its partnership with Moderna up a significant notch with an agreement for its next-generation genome editing unit, Life Edit Therapeutics. The two are collaborating on research and preclinical studies, funded by Moderna, and further development with Life Edit receiving payments and royalties as milestones are met.
There's a heightened need to bring more gene therapies into the public market more quickly. Only 36 therapies have been approved for public use by the FDA out of about 500 in the pipeline. In a promising signal, the FDA predicts that the gene therapy market will reach nearly $50 billion by 2027, and expects that by 2025, 10 to 20 products will be approved a year.
Investors have jumped in to support the company's mission. Last May's $401 million haul included 15 investors led by Matrix Capital Management, with existing investors Fidelity and Softbank Vision 2 participating, bringing its total capital raised to $1.3 billion. This latest round brought in Novo Nordisk as a strategic investor. The two have formed a $1.9 billion CRISPR partnership and profit-sharing option to develop more therapeutics.
Sign up for our weekly, original newsletter that goes beyond the annual Disruptor 50 list, offering a closer look at list-making companies and their innovative founders.
