rnai
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City Therapeutics
City Therapeutics is a Cambridge, Massachusetts biotechnology company engineering the next generation of RNA interference (RNAi) medicines. Founded by pioneers of the RNAi field, including former Alnylam CEO John Maraganore and Nobel-adjacent academic scientists, the company designs novel siRNA trigger molecules and targeting ligands intended to make RNAi drugs more potent, more specific, and able to reach tissues beyond the liver. Launched in October 2024 with a $135M Series A and backed by a further $99.5M Series B in 2026, City is advancing a pipeline led by CITY-FXI for thromboembolic disease and CITY-RBP4 for Stargardt disease, alongside research collaborations with Biogen and Bausch + Lomb.
Switch Therapeutics
Switch Therapeutics is a South San Francisco preclinical biotech building conditionally activated siRNA (CASi) therapies that only switch on inside the cell types where they're needed. The platform - born from research at Caltech, Harvard and City of Hope - aims to make RNA interference safe enough for the brain, with a lead program targeting APOE for Alzheimer's disease.
Aera Therapeutics
Aera Therapeutics is a Cambridge, Massachusetts biotech founded on a discovery from CRISPR pioneer Feng Zhang: human proteins that can self-assemble into capsid-like shells and ferry genetic cargo into cells. The company is building delivery platforms - protein nanoparticles, targeted lipid nanoparticles, and antibody-oligonucleotide conjugates - to solve the field's most stubborn problem: getting genetic medicines to the right tissue. Launched publicly in 2023 with $193M and led by Alnylam veteran Akin Akinc, Aera is betting that delivery, not the drug itself, is the bottleneck holding back the next generation of genetic medicine.
Atalanta Therapeutics
Atalanta Therapeutics is a Boston-based biotechnology company pioneering RNA interference (RNAi) therapies for diseases of the brain and spinal cord. Its proprietary divalent small interfering RNA (di-siRNA) platform is engineered to silence disease-causing genes durably and broadly across the central nervous system - long the hardest place in the body to reach with RNAi. Founded out of the RNA Therapeutics Institute at UMass Chan Medical School by leaders in the RNAi field, including Nobel laureate Craig Mello, the company is advancing wholly-owned programs in KCNT1-related epilepsy and Huntington's disease toward the clinic, alongside collaborations with Biogen and Genentech.