Camena Bioscience, a UK biotech, raised $10 million as it works on
improving the accuracy of DNA synthesis.
The Series A, led by UK venture capital fund Mercia Asset Management,
will go toward continuing development of the biotech’s DNA synthesis
platform, and it will also be used to hire 10 more employees, the
biotech announced Monday. The company currently employs 15 people.
Camena CEO and co-founder Steve Harvey told Endpoints News that the
company, which was founded in 2016, began making revenue last year
after signing commercial deals with “leading consumers of synthetic
genes,” according to a release.
He met Derek Stemple, Camena’s CSO and co-founder, at the National
Institute for Medical Research — which is now part of the Francis
Crick Institute — while he was doing his PhD. Stemple, an American
researcher, had studied at Caltech and Boston before going to the UK
to take a faculty position at the institute.
The company set out with the goal to “improve the accuracy of DNA
synthesis, improve our ability to make genes — some really difficult
to make gene sequences — and really to take a position of moving to an
enzymatic process of making DNA and genes,” Harvey added.
The crux of Camena’s enzymatic technology is to move away from
phosphoramidite synthesis, which Harvey said ends up wasting solvent.
They put together a multi-enzymatic approach to making DNA, combining
that with a fermentation process and an algorithm to design how the
company produces genes.
“To create a technology that solves environmental issues, but also is
more sustainable for their supply chain, is a big win for them,”
Harvey added.
The biotech also announced two new board appointments: Lee Lindley,
who is part of Mercia’s investment team, and Aditya Rajagopal, founder
and CTO of ChromaCode, a cancer testing company. DNA synthesis
