Delivering RNA-based medicines to organs beyond the liver is the obstacle a new Cambridge biotechnology firm intends to clear, and investors have backed the effort with $18 million in Seed funding.
The venture is Undecimal Bio, spun out of Eleven Therapeutics. Two funds, 4BIO Capital and IQ Capital, co-led the financing. Verve Ventures, Harel Tech, Entree Capital, Kerna Ventures and Saras Capital were among those writing checks. Board oversight falls to appointees from 4BIO Capital, IQ Capital and Harel Technologies, with Verve Ventures sitting in as an observer.
RNA interference, or RNAi, works by switching off the genetic instructions behind a disease, yet the technique has translated best in liver conditions. Steering a silencing molecule into heart, kidney or brain tissue has remained the field’s stubborn problem. Nor is it enough to silence the right gene; the therapy only functions if it actually arrives at the cells where that gene is switched on.
Undecimal’s platform, DELiveri, hunts for molecules able to ferry small interfering RNA into chosen cell types. Instead of sifting a narrow list of delivery candidates, the company screens large combinatorial libraries, then mines the resulting data. Cells serve as a molecular detection system that records delivery at single-molecule resolution, and agentic AI tools study the output to map how a molecule’s structure relates to its delivery ability.
Chief executive and co-founder Yaniv Erlich, who runs the venture with co-founder Shaul Ilan, framed the challenge bluntly: the hard problem in RNAi was never the silencing, but getting the molecule to the right cell. The money will push the DELiveri platform forward, advance early programs in renovascular disease, and expand staff at laboratories housed at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute. Eleven Therapeutics itself raised $22 million in 2022, with backing that included the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
