Gene therapy company Locana Inc stated on Wednesday that it has raised USD55m from its Series A financing led by existing investors ARCH Venture Partners with participation from Temasek and Lightstone Ventures, together with new investors UCB Ventures and GV (formerly Google Ventures).

The proceeds from the financing will be used to advance and expand Locana's pipeline of RNA-targeting gene therapy programmes, further extend capabilities of the Locana platform technology as well as assemble a premier leadership team, the company said.

Under the terms of the financing, Jeffrey M. Ostrove, PhD, former CEO of AbVitro and Ceregene, has been named as chief executive officer and director of Locana Inc.

ARCH has co-founded or seeded companies that have pioneered gene sequencing, genomics, immunotherapy, gene therapy, cell therapy, vaccines, infectious disease treatments and early disease detection.