Ansa raises funds for DNA synthesis technology development

Ansa Biotechnologies has raised $7.9m as part of its oversubscribed seed financing round.

Horizons Ventures led the financing round, with participation from Humboldt Fund, Mubadala Capital and other investors.

The latest financing takes the company’s total funding until now to $9.2m, combined with a pre-seed round raised, led by Fifty Years in December 2018.

Ansa Biotechnologies said that the new investment will support the development of its DNA synthesis technology. The company will use the funds to expand its team, build new R&D facilities and form strategic industrial tie-ups.

Ansa Biotechnologies CEO Daniel Arlow said: “Biology-based technology will continue to revolutionise multiple industries, and Ansa is poised to deliver the next generation of synthetic DNA to support this transformation. We believe that faster and more accurate DNA synthesis is foundational to fueling innovation in both biotechnology and basic biological research.

“To achieve our goals, we will rapidly expand our team by hiring top talent from industry and academia over the next few months.”

DNA synthesis technology developed by Ansa utilises enzyme-based approach and is allegedly faster, cleaner and more accurate than current methods.

Developed by the founders at UC Berkeley, this method uses an engineered template-independent polymerase conjugated to a single nucleoside triphosphate molecule to rapidly build a DNA sequence.

Fifty Years founding partner Seth Bannon said: “DNA read, write, and edit are the core pillars of synthetic biology.

“Currently, the ability to write DNA is the main bottleneck in the synthetic biology industry. By enabling faster, longer, and higher quality DNA synthesis with their fully enzymatic process, Ansa will help accelerate the entire synthetic biology industry.”

Horizons Ventures’ Patrick Zhang added: “Ansa’s unique and versatile enzymatic approach promises to set the standard for DNA synthesis speed and accuracy.

“We are excited to partner with Ansa to support the development of this critical technology that will streamline writing the DNA code that powers the synthetic biology industry.”