Garuda Therapeutics Receives $62M for Blood Stem Cell Therapy

Cambridge, MA-based Garuda Therapeutics closed a $62 million series B funding round to support its off-the-shelf, self-renewing blood stem cell technology.

Northpond Ventures, OrbiMed, Cormorant, Aisling Capital, Mass General Brigham Ventures and other “elite investors and individuals” are backing the biotech company.

The startup launched 15 months ago with $72 million in Series A funding, with the aim to use its cell therapy to potentially cure over 70 diseases. Since then, it has identified a further 50 which could benefit from stem cell treatment.

Its therapy uses proprietary hematopoietic stem cells, which will be faster and more effective, and lead to greater patient accessibility. Using a patient’s own depleted cells or finding a biological donor match is both costly and time prohibitive, according to the company.

CEO and co-founder Dhvanit Shah said the goal is to best the existing treatments by improving consistency, scalability, durability, availability of healthy donors and affordability.

Garuda added to its C-suite last year with the hires of technology chief David DiGiusto, who was previously CTO at biomanufacturer National Resilience, Roger Sawhney as CFO, which follows a similar role at mRNA biotech Omega Therapeutics, and James Desiderio as chief regulatory officer.

Cormorant managing director Raymond Kelleher joined the board, which also includes Shah, OrbiMed’s Carl Gordon, Aisling’s Eric Aguiar, Northpond’s Daniel Janse, Decibel Therapeutics CEO Laurence Reid and Resilience CEO Rahul Singhvi.