Spearhead Bio raises funds for faster gene-editing tech

Spearhead Bio has closed an oversubscribed $1.62 million seed round to advance a genome engineering platform designed to address one of CRISPR’s key challenges: precisely inserting or replacing large pieces of DNA at targeted locations in crop genomes.

The round comes a couple of years after Spearhead launched out of Danforth Technology Company (DTC), a subsidiary of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri.

The new round gives Spearhead runway to demonstrate how its Transposase Assisted Homology Independent Targeted Insertion (TAHITI) technology can lead to faster and more controlled introduction of genes into both transgenic and non-transgenic crops.

Spearhead Bio founder Keith Slotkin says the technology “saves our partners years of development time and millions of dollars in crop improvement.”

Mike Bielski, CEO of Spearhead Bio, says that while the company uses CRISPR for gene editing, it is far from being “just another CRISPR company.”