BioCentury
ARTICLE | Finance

With $75M from Apple Tree, Limelight seeks to overcome limitations of genetic therapy

How Apple Tree assembled suite of technologies to address challenges that limit other gene therapies

December 5, 2019 1:35 PM UTC
Updated on Dec 5, 2019 at 6:19 PM UTC

With a $75 million series A investment, and Biogen veteran Michael Ehlers joining newly launched Limelight Bio as CEO, Apple Tree Partners believes a multiplatform approach to gene therapy can overcome limitations of the modality and address diseases previously untreatable via that method.

“We’re building a multidisease, multiplatform company to tackle some big gaps in genetic therapy,” Ehlers told BioCentury. Since its 2017 founding, Limelight has assembled a package of technologies, including a method of delivering genetic material larger than what adeno-associated viral (AAV) vectors typically carry; a technology designed to ensure that genes are expressed at endogenous levels, rather than too high or too low; a way to effect multi-exon replacement; and a non-viral delivery approach...