UC Berkeley spinout Mammoth Biosciences emerged from stealth in February 2018 with a Crispr-based approach for detecting diseases in DNA or RNA sequences.
Mammoth Biosciences, a US-based genetic engineering technology spinout from University of California (UC) Berkeley, has obtained $23m in a series A round led by venture capital firm Mayfield Fund, according to TechCrunch.
Venture capital firms NFX and 8VC also contributed to the series A round.
Mammoth Biosciences is building an indexing system to help genetic engineers detect diseases with Crispr proteins, which can be used to alter DNA or RNA sequences.
The technology evaluates sample photographs taken via smartphone and is designed to diagnose the nature of targets using Crispr within 30 minutes.
Mammoth Biosciences is working on a system enabling its partners to tap into the technology to search for their own biomarkers. It will put the capital towards developing this service.
The funding will also be used to build Mammoth’s intellectual property portfolio, to fill key vacancies and provide education on Crispr for diagnostics.
David Savage, an assistant professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley’s College of Chemistry, will join the Mammoth advisory board together with Charles Chui from UC San Francisco’s Abbott Viral Diagnostics and Discovery Center.
Mammoth Biosciences emerged from stealth in February 2018 with an undisclosed amount of funding from Mayfield, NFX, 8VC, AME Cloud Ventures, Wireframe Ventures, Kairos Ventures and Boom Capital.
Ursheet Parikh, partner at Mayfield, said: “Mammoth has developed a transformative platform, able to detect nucleic acid assays on DNA and RNA without an associated device.
“This has the potential to significantly reduce costs in diagnostics, which is a fundamental driving force in transforming healthcare.”