Cambridge, Mass. — Ride Therapeutics announced a strategic investment of up to $7.3 million from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to advance its Molecular Logistics platform and develop genetic medicine delivery technologies for cystic fibrosis.
The funding will support development of novel non-viral carriers designed to deliver genetic medicines to the lung. The work will build on Ride’s progress with systemic intravenous delivery and expand the technology for inhaled delivery.
Ride’s Molecular Logistics platform creates highly diverse libraries containing millions of nanoparticles using a proprietary nano-engineering approach. The carriers can be produced in different sizes, with different biocompatible components and for a range of genetic medicine cargoes.
The company evaluates the nanoparticle libraries following intravenous or inhaled administration to determine which tissues and cell types each carrier reaches. The resulting data are used to train an artificial intelligence model that powers a generative design engine for developing carriers optimized for specific tissues and cell types.
Genetic medicines, including RNA therapies, gene therapies and gene-editing approaches, have potential applications in cystic fibrosis and other diseases. However, delivering these medicines to tissues and cell types beyond the liver remains a significant challenge.
Ride was launched in 2023 as a spinout from Harvard University and the University of Cambridge using technology developed in the laboratories of scientific co-founders David Weitz, Ph.D., and Tuomas Knowles, Ph.D. The company was initially funded through an $8 million seed round.
“The promise of genetic medicines has never been greater but can only be realized by solving the delivery challenge. Ride has built a unique platform that learns the rules of delivery by measuring it directly in the body, not in a dish or a simulation,” said Sam Cohen, Ph.D., Co-founder and CEO of Ride Therapeutics.
“Our vision is to decode the biological language of delivery through data generation on a scale no one has reached before. Ride has already screened millions of diverse carriers, discovering hits in many traditionally hard-to-reach tissues. We are excited to join the mission to deliver a cure for all cystic fibrosis patients in collaboration with the CF Foundation, an organization whose leadership, expertise, and commitment to patients are recognized around the world,” Cohen added.
