Synthetic Biology Welcomes Enlaza Therapeutics to the Game

Enlaza scientist working in lab/ Courtesy of Enlaza Therapeutics

Synthetic biology is a rapidly emerging field that has the potential to revolutionize the treatment landscape for scores of human diseases. And investors have taken note of the field’s enormous potential. 

Over the past three years, companies such as Amyris, Ginkgo Bioworks and Synthego have tapped this enthusiasm to raise billions in capital.

Thursday, La Jolla, California-based Enlaza Therapeutics became the latest synthetic biology company to do so, raising a noteworthy $61 million in seed financing.

The financing round was led by Avalon Ventures, a life sciences venture capital firm focused on supporting seed and early-stage companies. Lightspeed Venture Partners, Frazier Life Sciences and Samsara BioCapital also contributed.

Avalon was also an early investor in the synthetic nucleotide company Synthorx in 2014. After a bidding war, Synthorx was bought out by French drugmaker Sanofi for $2.5 billion in 2019. 

Enlaza’s Covalent Protein Therapeutics could be a Gamechanger  

Enlaza’s synthetic drug development platform centers around the use of unnatural amino acids to enable protein therapeutics to bond covalently to disease targets in a highly-specific manner. 

The biotech’s novel covalent biologics platform, known as War-Lock, has reportedly shown fast tumor penetration rates and high systemic clearance in pre-clinical oncology studies.

Down the road, Enlaza’s management team expects to explore the technology’s use as a way to improve the efficacy and safety of gold-standard anti-cancer treatments such as antibody-drug conjugates and radioligand therapies.

Enlaza’s War-Lock platform is based on research out of the University of California San Francisco. In its press release, the company noted it holds an exclusive license on the technology via an agreement with UCSF’s Innovation Ventures’ Office of Technology Management & Advancement

In an interview with BioSpace, Enlaza Co-founder and CEO Sergio Duron said the company will initially focus on evaluating its unique, white-space platform in oncology.

However, the company expects to eventually assess the technology across a broad array of human diseases with a high unmet medical need. 

“We expect covalency to become a standard part of the toolbox for drug discovery," Duron said.

Enlaza is the only biotech currently exploring the utility of covalent biologics in any human disease setting.