Chroma Medicine, Nvelop Therapeutics Merge as nChroma Bio with Focus on Epigenetic Therapies

Two biotech companies, Chroma Medicine and Nvelop Therapeutics, have merged to form nChroma Bio, a new company that combines epigenetic editing capabilities with in vivo delivery technologies. Concurrent with the merger, nChroma also announced that it has raised $75 million in financing that provides additional capital which will be used to continue developing its lead therapy for liver disease.

The financing round was led by Cormorant Asset Management, ARCH Venture Partners, Atlas Venture, and Newpath Partners. Other investors who participated in the round include 5AM Ventures, DCVC Bio, F-Prime Capital, GV (Google Ventures), Janus Henderson Investors, Mubadala Capital, Omega Funds, Sixth Street, Sofinnova Partners, T. Rowe Price, Wellington Management, Alexandria Venture Investments, Casdin Capital, Menlo Ventures, and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

Jeff Walsh will serve as the CEO of the consolidated company while Jeff Marrazzo has been appointed chairman of the board. In addition, Melissa Bonner, PhD, will serve as CSO; Noah Goodman as chief business officer; and Padma Malyala as senior vice president for technology development. In addition, Jenny Marlowe, PhD, will be nChroma Bio’s chief development officer; and Lisa McGrath will be chief people officer. Additionally, Catherine Stehman-Breen, Chroma Medicine’s CEO, will remain as an advisor to the company.

Over the next few years, nChroma Bio will use the new funding plus existing funds from both companies to build a broad pipeline of epigenetic editors that target hepatic and extrahepatic diseases, as well as to develop programmable, non-viral vehicles for tissue-specific in vivo delivery beyond the liver. As part of their next steps, the consolidated company will continue making progress on CRMA-1001, a liver-targeted epigenetic editing therapy intended to treat chronic hepatitis B and hepatitis D that was initially developed at Chroma Medicine. In preclinical models, CRMA-1001 demonstrated durable silencing of HBV biomarkers, according to the company.

In a conversation with GEN, CEO Walsh explained that the decision to merge the companies grew out of conversations about how best to make progress on developing novel gene-editing therapies. Bringing the technologies from both companies together means nChroma Bio has the capabilities in-house to develop potent cargo as well as high-capacity programmable delivery technologies for specific in vivo targeting. “That’s really what we’re bringing together with this announcement,” he said. “[We are] joining forces under the new name to pioneer the next generation of genetic medicines.”

Walsh also highlighted the merits of combining a cargo-oriented company with one focused on developing delivery vehicles. Boards at both companies were already discussing internally how best to move their technologies forward. For Nvelop, those conversations centered on identifying a proprietary cargo that could leverage their delivery system. For Chroma Medicine, the goal was to access a delivery technology that would enable them to expand the reach of their editors beyond the liver. Also, “we have some common founders, common investors, and also some common board members,” Walsh said. “All of that allowed us to drive this in a way that just made sense.”

Preclinical studies for CRMA-1001 are ongoing and nChroma Bio plans to submit a clinical trial application in 2025. They hope to begin dosing patients by 2026 and to have clinical biomarker readouts from the first Phase I cohorts that same year.

The company is also making progress on the delivery technology that it will use for its therapies. Validation data from internal studies demonstrate its flexibility in terms of cargo capacity and that it can be programmed to target specific cells of interest. Their data also indicates that the vehicle can carry various editors including CRISPR-Cas9, base editors, and prime editors in addition to epigenetic editors.

Commenting on the upcoming therapy, Marlow, nChroma’s new chief development officer, said that CRMA-1001 will address “the primary deficiencies” of standard treatments for chronic hepatitis B and hepatitis D as well as other treatments currently in clinical development. “What we’ve shown in our preclinical data with our epigenetic editor is that we are able to permanently suppress expression of viral antigens with this therapy,” she said. “The other aspect is that we are able to do that without cutting the DNA. Those are really the two aspects that led us to take this as the lead asset for the platform.”

The combined company will operate out of what used to be Chroma Medicine’s offices in Boston. At this time, nChroma Bio is not disclosing which other targets it will pursue besides hepatitis infections.

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