28. Januar 2025 – RhyGaze, a biotechnology company based in Basel and Philadelphia announced that it has secured a Series A financing of USD 86 million. The round was led by GV (Google Ventures), alongside Arch Venture Partners, F-Prime Capital and founding investors BioGeneration Ventures and Novartis Venture Fund, who contributed USD 11 million to an earlier seed round.

RhyGaze was founded on intellectual property exclusively licensed to the company by the Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel (IOB), a scientific institute led by Director Botond Roska, M.D., Ph.D., who is a scientific co-founder of RhyGaze. This funding will enable further development of RhyGaze’s lead clinical candidate, a novel gene therapy for optogenetic vision restoration in diseases causing blindness. Activities to be supported include formal pharmacology and toxicology testing, a non-interventional, observational study to assess potential clinical endpoints in patient groups eligible for the therapy and a first-in-human clinical trial to test the safety, tolerability and potential efficacy of the lead candidate.

Walder Wyss advised RhyGaze since its foundation and in both financing rounds. The team was led by Robert von Rosen (Partner, Corporate/M&A) and further included Alexander Gutmans (Partner, Corporate/M&A and Venture Capital), Lucas Maurer (Associate, Corporate/M&A) and Dario Glauser (Associate, Employment).