The Melbourne biotech formerly known as Rage Bio is testing an inhaled RNA medicine against one of the deadliest diseases few people talk about. Its bet: don't manage the disease, change it.
The first thing to know about Atisama Therapeutics is that it used to have a blunter name. For its first years it was Rage Bio - a wink at the molecule its scientists were chasing, the Receptor for Advanced Glycation End-products, or RAGE. In May 2026 the company traded the pun for something quieter. Atisama, from Sanskrit roots meaning "superior" and "balanced state," is meant to describe what the drugs are supposed to do: restore a molecular balance that goes missing in chronic inflammatory disease.
Names in biotech usually don't mean much. This one does a fair amount of work. Atisama is a clinical-stage company in Melbourne developing a class of RNA medicines called splice-switching oligonucleotides, and its whole scientific argument is about balance - dialling down a protein that drives disease while dialling up a protective version of the same protein. The rebrand landed at the same moment the company crossed a real line: from a lab with an interesting idea to a company dosing that idea in human beings.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is the target. It is not an obscure one. COPD is the third leading cause of death worldwide and affects roughly 400 million people, yet it draws a fraction of the biotech attention aimed at flashier conditions. Most of the medicines available for it - the inhalers people know - ease symptoms. They open airways and calm flare-ups. They do not change the underlying course of the disease.
That gap - enormous need, thin competition, no disease-modifying standard - is the whole reason Atisama exists. "RB042 offers the potential for a disease-modifying therapy in COPD, a market with millions of patients worldwide and few effective options," CEO Dr Siro Perez has said. It is a market chosen less by ambition than by arithmetic.
RB042, the lead drug, is a splice-switching oligonucleotide - a short, engineered strand of genetic material that changes how a gene's message gets edited before it becomes a protein. Most gene-silencing drugs do one thing: they shut a target down. Atisama's platform is built to do two at once. It redirects the RAGE gene's pre-mRNA toward a protective, soluble form of the receptor called esRAGE, which acts like a sponge for the inflammatory signals that damage lung tissue. Down goes the disease-driving isoform; up goes its protective twin.
There is a second thing that makes RB042 unusual. It is inhaled. Oligonucleotide drugs are famously hard to deliver, and most are injected and travel through the bloodstream. Getting a fragile RNA strand deep into inflamed lungs, intact and in the right cells, is an engineering problem as much as a biological one. If Atisama has a moat, delivery is a good candidate for where it sits.
Atisama did not come out of a garage. It was assembled. IP Group Australia, an investor that builds companies around university research, pulled the science together from a collaboration spanning Monash, Murdoch and the University of Western Australia, with input from the Baker and Perron medical research institutes. The splice-switching expertise traces to a lineage of Australian RNA researchers; the RAGE biology to work at Monash. Dr Chris Wraight served as founding CEO and now leads the science as CSO.
The CEO's path is its own small story. Before running Atisama, Dr Siro Perez led the Life Sciences team at IP Group Australia - meaning he helped back the company before he left the fund to run it. Investors crossing to the operating side is rare enough to be worth noticing. Dr Edwin Tucker, a veteran drug developer, joined as Chief Medical and Development Officer.
In November 2025 the company - still Rage Bio at that point - closed a AU$29 million Series A led by IP Group Australia and superannuation fund Hostplus, with existing backer Monash Ventures alongside. Then, in July 2026, it stacked non-dilutive fuel on top: more than AU$15 million from the Australian Government's Medical Research Future Fund, shared with Monash University, to keep pushing RB042 through the clinic.
"This funding from the Australian Government is a significant validation of our science and our team's ability to translate it into the clinic."Dr Siro Perez
RB042 is now in a Phase 1 trial (registered as NCT07285122), enrolling healthy volunteers and healthy smokers. By mid-2026 the company had completed three of four single ascending dose cohorts and moved into multiple ascending dose cohorts, with higher-dose readouts expected in the second half of the year. "RB042 clinical progress is tracking to plan," said CMDO Dr Ed Tucker. "Safety and tolerability across three SAD cohorts have supported advancement into MAD dosing."
The trial is being run with Monash University, with Professor Merlin Thomas - a RAGE researcher and one of the scientific figures behind the platform - leading it. Around the same time, the company added a notable name to its board: Dr Bernard Coulie, President and CEO of NASDAQ-listed Pliant Therapeutics and a former senior executive at Johnson & Johnson, agreed to chair it. When someone running a public respiratory company volunteers for the chair of a 15-person startup, the signal is usually about the science, not the title.
Atisama sits at an intersection. On one side are the RNA and oligonucleotide specialists - Ionis, Sarepta, Wave Life Sciences - who have proven the modality but mostly work outside the lungs. On the other are respiratory-focused biotechs and the large-pharma incumbents whose inhalers dominate COPD care by managing symptoms. Atisama's pitch is to bring the precision of RNA medicine into a disease that has largely been treated with bronchodilators and steroids, delivered the way patients already expect respiratory drugs to arrive: through an inhaler.
The business model is the standard clinical-stage one. There is no product revenue and won't be for years. Value gets created by de-risking RB042 through trial milestones, funded by a mix of venture capital and government grants, with the eventual exits being a partnership, a license, or an acquisition by a larger drug company. Fifteen people, one lead asset, and a platform that could - if the splice-switching approach holds up - point at other chronic inflammatory diseases later.
What's left is the part no biotech can talk its way past: the data. Phase 1 tests safety, not cure, and the higher-dose readouts due later in 2026 will say more about whether the balance metaphor survives contact with human lungs. Until then, Atisama is a clear idea, unusually well-funded for its size, with a name that finally matches its thesis.