Date: Jul 31, 2014 Author: Don Seiffert Source: bizjournals (
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Jul 31, 2014, 7:28am EDT
Gen9 gets $25M in equity funding for DNA synthesis
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Gen9, a Cambridge-based synthetic biology co-founded in 2009 by Harvard professor George Church, has filed for the receipt of $25 million in equity.
The investment, disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, more than doubles the amount of equity it has received over the past five years.
Contacted for comment on the filing, Kevin Munnelly, president and CEO of Gen9, said in an email that "we are pleased with the ongoing support from our investors and this financing bolsters our capital position as we continue to build the leading DNA synthesis company for the synthetic biology marketplace."
The company has not issued a press release about a funding round since March 2013, when it announced $21 million from Agilent Technologies.
Last week, the company announced the commercial launch of its GeneByte Plus synthetic DNA, which cane be created in lengths ranging from 3,000 to 10,000 base pairs. Before than, the company could synthesize DNA of less than 3,000 base pairs. According to the company, the synthetic DNA has the potential to "enable scientists in biology and other industrial fields to study the behavior of full genes, metabolic pathways, distant genetic elements, genomes, and other aspects of DNA that cannot currently be interrogated with shorter synthetic DNA fragments."
Besides Munnelly, individuals listed as related persons on the filing are: Joseph Jacobson, co-founder, executive chairman and CTO; Drew Endy, a co-founder and assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford University; Jeremy Wertheimer, a director and vice president at Google; Jim Hollenhorst, director and senior director of technology for Agilent; Jacob Thaysen, vice president and general manager for Agilent's diagnostics and genomics business; and Neil Cook, vice president and director at Agilent.
