Newly Launched Tome Biosciences Acquires Replace Therapeutics for $65M

Pictured: Two business professionals in suits shaking hands/iStock, fizkes

Tome Biosciences, which recently came into the biotech world with over $200 million in its arsenal, has secured an acquisition of Replace Therapeutics for $65 million upfront and “near-term” milestones, according to Tuesday’s announcement.

The merger transaction has a total value expected to be $185 million with a mix of stocks and cash. The deal will also see Replace become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tome Biosciences.

Tome said in its announcement that Replace was founded by Shakked Halperin, whose previous venture Rewrite Therapeutics was acquired by Intellia Therapeutics in February 2022. That deal saw Intellia pay Rewrite’s shareholders $45 million upfront with a transaction involving a transfer of $155 million in Intellia stock and cash.

Rewrite uses a combination of CRISPR/Cas9 technology with the writing enzyme DNA ligase to manipulate small DNA sequences. The acquisition aims to use this technology to complement Tome’s technology, known as PGI, or programmable genomic integration, to create cell and gene therapies by inserting a genetic sequence into a location within the genome.

“The addition of L-PGI to our PGI toolset provides us with the flexibility to choose the right editing tool for the right indication, expanding the types of diseases that we have the potential to cure,” Tome CEO Rahul Kakkar said in a statement.

Halperin added in the announcement that Replace had designed its ligase-mediated tech to make DNA edits “with a higher precision and efficiency than that seen with other DNA editing technologies.”  

Tome emerged in December 2023 with a total of $213 million in Series A and B funding rounds from ARCH Venture Partners, Fujifilm, and Andreessen Horowitz Bio + Health, among several others. Tome’s PGI technology was developed at MIT and aims to combine the specificity of CRISPR with enzymes that are able to insert or write DNA sequences without the need for double-strand DNA breaks. 

Tyler Patchen is a staff writer at BioSpace. You can reach him at tyler.patchen@biospace.com. Follow him on LinkedIn.