DLA Piper represented Locana, Inc. in a US$55 million round of Series A financing led by ARCH Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Temasek and Lightstone Ventures. New investors include UCB Ventures and GV (formerly Google Ventures).

Founded in 2016 and based in San Diego, Locana is an RNA-targeting gene therapy company with a platform technology to address a wide spectrum of human genetic diseases. The company has advanced a powerful modular RNA targeting-effector approach to optimize and advance therapeutic candidates that is distinct from DNA-targeted approaches and nucleic acid-based RNA targeting. Locana is advancing multiple programs through preclinical studies with an initial focus on repeat expansion diseases.

Locana plans to use the funds to expand and advance its pipeline of RNA-targeting gene therapy programs, further extend the capabilities of its platform technology, and assemble a premier leadership team.

The DLA Piper team representing Locana was led by partner Randy Socol (San Diego) and included partner Danish Hamid (Washington, DC) and associates Shehzad Huda, Sebastian Bacon (both of San Diego) and Gabriel Weiner (Silicon Valley).