5Y News | 5Y Capital Portfolio Company ReviR Therapeutics Raises $30 Million in Series A Funding
Continuing to advance "oral gene therapy" through AI+RNA.
On July 26, 2024, ReviR Therapeutics announced the completion of a $30 million Series A round. The round was led by Dragonstone Capital, with continued follow-on investment from existing shareholders CDH Investments, 5Y Capital, and Yayi Capital. XtalPi and the CMT Research Foundation (CMTRF) also participated as new investors. The proceeds will be used to further develop ReviR's proprietary AI-driven drug discovery platform, VoyageR, combining AI technology with the team's extensive drug development expertise to advance its Huntington's disease (HD) pipeline, as well as preclinical and clinical development for multiple neurological disease programs including Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and others.
Founded in 2021, ReviR has previously raised tens of millions of dollars from leading investment firms including 5Y Capital, CDH Investments, Shunwei Capital, Sky9 Capital, Tiantu Capital, BlueRun Ventures, Yayi Capital, and Capital O. The company has since built out a fully internationalized team, advanced AI platform, and mature pipeline system, focusing on self-developed programs for neurodegenerative and other genetic rare diseases while also pursuing partnerships and pipeline development in oncology, immunology, and metabolic diseases.
In drug development, over 80% of known disease-related proteins cannot be targeted by existing approaches, creating a major "undruggable" challenge for innovative drug R&D. Traditional gene therapies face delivery difficulties — particularly in neurological diseases, where large-molecule drugs struggle to cross the blood-brain barrier. Most require invasive administration methods such as injection, with irreversible treatment effects and low dosing efficiency.
Based on the central dogma of molecular biology, ReviR develops innovative therapies starting from RNA upstream of proteins, combining AI to create orally available gene therapies that use small-molecule drugs to modulate RNA and influence protein expression — achieving therapeutic breakthroughs at the genetic level by targeting disease mechanisms.
Currently, ReviR focuses on developing small molecules that modulate RNA splicing, leveraging its self-developed VoyageR AI drug discovery platform for splice target prediction, molecular activity prediction, and molecular generation and optimization. The platform, trained on internally generated omics datasets, has matured through three years of iteration and significantly accelerated pipeline progress.
On this foundation, ReviR's "orally available gene therapy" approach can regulate gene expression for a broad range of genetic diseases, while offering low administration barriers, high patient accessibility, and relatively reversible treatment with lower risk. It may bring transformative change to numerous currently untreatable hereditary neurological diseases and cancers, benefiting hundreds of millions of patients worldwide.
Dr. Yang Li, co-founder and chairman of ReviR, said: "Neurological diseases are highly diverse and affect vast patient populations globally, yet most still lack effective treatments. ReviR is focused on developing orally available gene therapies that regulate genes at the RNA level, providing more convenient and safer treatment options for patients. We are deeply grateful for the recognition and support from both new and existing shareholders. As ReviR transitions from early platform building toward clinical stages, we will continue to optimize and iterate our AI platform and advance our pipeline into clinical trials, bringing our research to market."
Dr. Shuhao Wen, chairman of XtalPi, said: "Small molecules targeting RNA significantly expand the boundaries of drug discovery and hold promise for entirely new therapeutic breakthroughs. ReviR's proprietary AI platform has notable advantages in RNA functional structure analysis, small-molecule screening and prediction, and target binding assessment. The team has deep accumulated expertise in drug development, and XtalPi has established a close collaborative relationship with ReviR over time, providing solid support through our advanced AI + robotics drug discovery platform. Our current collaboration has already yielded pipeline assets that we plan to advance to clinical stages. RNA targets offer vast development potential, and we look forward to advancing RNA therapy innovation together to bring higher-quality, more efficient innovative drug options to patients worldwide."
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