Ride to get up to $7.3M from CF Foundation for gene delivery tech
Company says its platform could make genetic medicines more feasible in CF
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The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation is investing up to $7.3 million in Ride Therapeutics to develop nonviral carriers of genetic therapies intended to reach the lungs for all people with cystic fibrosis (CF).
Ride said its technology could ultimately make genetic medicines more feasible in CF by improving the delivery of therapeutic cargo to target cells.
“The promise of genetic medicines has never been greater but can only be realized by solving the delivery challenge,” Sam Cohen, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Ride, said in a company press release.
Funding targets molecular carriers capable of reaching the lungs
Genetic medicines — including RNA-based treatments, gene therapies, and gene-editing approaches — have been tested in an increasing number of clinical trials and several have already received regulatory approval. But delivering these therapies efficiently to tissues and cell types outside the liver remains difficult, limiting their broader use.
For CF, developing ways to deliver such medicines effectively to the lungs could be particularly important. The CF Foundation’s funding is intended to help Ride produce and track molecular carriers capable of reaching the lungs.
The investment will support Ride’s Molecular Logistics platform, which produces sets of nanoparticles (tiny molecules) of different sizes and from a variety of biocompatible components. They are then tracked following body-wide or inhaled delivery to know where exactly they are in the body. Using billions of data points, an artificial intelligence model is then employed to ultimately produce optimized carriers for specific tissues and cell types.
Ride has built a unique platform that learns the rules of delivery by measuring it directly in the body, not in a dish or a simulation.
Ride’s approach intends to create what the company describes as ultra-diverse libraries containing millions of nanoparticles.
“Ride has built a unique platform that learns the rules of delivery by measuring it directly in the body, not in a dish or a simulation,” Cohen said.
He added that the company aims to “decode the biological language of delivery” by generating data on a very large scale.
“Ride has already screened millions of diverse carriers, discovering hits in many traditionally hard-to-reach tissues,” Cohen said.
The CF Foundation’s investment is expected to accelerate work already underway on intravenous (into-the-vein) delivery, while also supporting an expansion of the platform into inhaled delivery.
Ride was launched in 2023 as a spinout from Harvard University and the University of Cambridge, using technology developed in the laboratories of the company’s scientific co-founders, David Weitz, PhD, and Tuomas Knowles, PhD.
“We are excited to join the mission to deliver a cure for all cystic fibrosis patients in collaboration with the CF Foundation,” Cohen said, citing the organization’s expertise and commitment to people living with the disease.
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