Two Boston-area biotechs are shedding staff and merging together to form a new genetic medicines company.
Chroma Medicines and Nvelop Therapeutics are fusing their names and science to launch nChroma Bio, the companies announced in a Dec. 11 release, along with the backing of a $75 million fundraising round led by Cormorant Asset Management, Arch Venture Partners, Atlas Venture and Newpath Partners.
Drug delivery company Nvelop was formed in 2022 and publicly launched in April 2024 with former bluebird bio executives at the helm. Former bluebird Chief Strategy Officer Jeff Walsh became Nvelop’s CEO, and he will now take charge of nChroma, the company said.
Employees on both sides are, however, being laid off as part of the merger, Walsh told Fierce Biotech in an interview. He declined to say exactly how many staff members were impacted by the workforce reduction.
Walsh said that while bringing together the two companies “creates tremendous growth opportunities,” that is paired with “a need to realize efficiencies, and after a very thorough evaluation of the combined companies, we identified areas of redundancies and overlap.”
Joining Walsh in nChroma’s C-suite are fellow Nvelop vets Melissa Bonner, Ph.D., and Lisa McGrath, who will keep their respective titles of chief scientific officer and chief people officer. Continuing on from Chroma are Noah Goodman, chief business officer; Padma Malyala, senior vice president of technology development; and Jenny Marlowe, Ph.D., chief development officer and former bluebird vice president.
The merger began organically Sept. 25 at a restaurant near Chroma’s offices called Bar Taco, Walsh said. He was dining with Chroma CEO Catherine Stehman-Breen, M.D., whom he has known for years, when they realized the two companies are a good match for their combined ability to address a perennial problem in genetic medicine—targeted, in vivo delivery of effective cargo without hitting dose-limiting toxicity.
Over the following whirlwind 10 weeks, the merger was hashed out and the $75 million was raised.
Stehman-Breen will serve as an adviser to nChroma, according to the release. The companies will consolidate into Chroma’s headquarters in Boston.
The fledgling firm will adopt Chroma’s lead asset for chronic hepatitis B and hepatitis D, CRMA-1001, with the goal of submitting a clinical trial application in 2025, Marlowe told Fierce in a joint interview with Walsh. NChroma hopes to dose the first patients, and have the first clinical data readout, in 2026, she added.
CRMA-1001 is an epigenetic modifier that turns off gene expression in the hepatitis virus by adding methyl groups to the virus’s DNA without making any cuts or edits to the DNA molecule itself.
“We think it is going to achieve significant rates of functional cure,” Marlowe said. “Significantly higher than standard of care, certainly.”
Though nChroma is using lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) to deliver CRMA-1001 rather than Nvelop’s engineered viruslike particles (VLPs), the plan is to use VLPs for non-liver indications going forward.
“LNPs are really good at getting in the liver,” Marlowe said. “We need to get out of the liver, and VLPs will be a key tool to doing that.”
Chroma has raised $260 million since launching in 2021, bringing in a $135 million series B in February 2023.
With the cash balances of both combined companies sitting in the bank, on top of the still-fresh $75 million, nChroma hopes to rapidly move CRMA-1001 forward while building up a considerable pipeline behind it, Walsh said.
NChroma is also open to collaborating with other pharma and biotech players, Walsh said, and both of its predecessor companies have active discussions with potential partners.
“I'm a big believer that this combination catalyzes the opportunity for several major partnerships for us going forward,” he said.