CircNova, a Michigan startup with offices in Cambridge, Mass., has closed a $3.3 million seed round as it develops new therapies using technology developed by MIT alumnus Joe DeAngelo. The company is led by its Boston-based co-founder and CEO Crystal Brown.
Houston, Texas-based South Loop Ventures led the funding round with participation from San Francisco-based Spark Capital and Michigan investors — Dug Song of Duo Security, Union Heritage, Michigan Rise, Invest Detroit and Kalamazoo Forward Ventures.
The company has found a way to generate, analyze and identify so-called circular RNA for therapeutic development, with the prospect of treating ovarian cancer, triple-negative breast cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and rare genetic diseases.
Circular RNA, or ribonucleic acid, are a class of structures forming a circle, rather than a strand, that can be used to build therapies for varied medical conditions. CircNova identifies circular RNA via an AI-based system it has developed, called NovaEngine.
“We can reverse engineer. We can go from sequence to structure. We can go from structure to sequence when developing the molecule,” Brown, who previously co-founded and ran Great Lakes Biologics, told TechCrunch.
In addition to NovaEngine, the company has a so-called wet lab, which means its AI engine produces the actual physical molecules that can then be validated and researched in collaboration with the University of Michigan, TechCrunch quoted Brown as saying.
Brown, who received BA and MBA degrees from the University of Michigan, initially worked in Detroit’s automotive industry, even fancying a shot at the C-suite. However, chance brought her into the life sciences industry, when a friend introduced her to the CEO of a biotech startup. She took to the sector with zest, gaining enough knowledge to establish her own contract research startup, Great Lakes Biologics.
DeAngelo was a consultant at Great Lakes Biologics before teaming up with Brown to start CircNova where he serves as chief scientific officer. He was previously the CEO of biotech Neochromosome.
