HAYA Therapeutics raises USD 65 million to advance RNA-guided therapies for chronic disease
Life sciences
12 May 2025
The company’s co-founders, CEO Samir Ounzain and CTO Daniel Blessing, received an award at the Festival of the Future in Munich. | © HAYA Therapeutics
HAYA Therapeutics, a precision medicine company based at Biopôle in Lausanne, has closed a USD 65 million Series A funding round to accelerate the clinical development of its RNA-guided therapies and expand its regulatory genome platform.
The financing round, co-led by Sofinnova Partners and Earlybird Venture Capital, includes participation from Eli Lilly and Company, ATHOS, +ND Capital, Alexandria Venture Investments, and LifeLink Ventures, alongside existing investors Apollo Health Ventures, Broadview-affiliate Longview Ventures, 4see ventures, BERNINA Bioinvest, and Schroders Capital.
HAYA Therapeutics will use the new capital to initiate clinical trials for its lead candidate, HTX-001, a first-in-class long non-coding RNA (lncRNA)-targeting therapy for heart failure. The initial indication is non-obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (nHCM), a condition with limited treatment options. In parallel, the company will continue to develop its proprietary platform and pipeline, targeting diseases such as pulmonary fibrosis, obesity, and other chronic and age-related conditions.
A next-generation platform decoding the dark genome
HAYA’s approach focuses on the regulatory genome—the 98% of DNA that does not code for proteins but controls gene expression and cell identity. The company has built a comprehensive atlas of this so-called “dark genome,” using multimodal genomics, machine learning, and computational biology to map and modulate disease-driving cell states.
By targeting lncRNAs specific to particular tissues and disease states, HAYA aims to reprogram pathological cells at the source, offering therapies with higher precision and fewer side effects than traditional approaches. The company’s RNA-guided therapeutics are designed to be scalable, fast to develop, and deeply programmable.
HAYA’s recent partnership with Eli Lilly, one of the largest collaborations in the field of regulatory genomics, further validates its platform’s potential.
