A new startup from Feng Zhang and an ex-Illumina executive zeroes in on the epigenome

To build a new biotechnology startup, Alex Aravanis looked to the past.

The former Illumina and Grail executive has spent decades examining the human genome, starting with his postdoctoral studies at Stanford University in the early aughts. There, he befriended a graduate student by the name of Feng Zhang.

The two parted ways as their careers took off. Aravanis rose through the ranks at the DNA sequencing giant Illumina and co-founded its cancer detection spinout, Grail. Zhang, meanwhile, became a pioneering scientist in the field of gene editing, as well as a prolific founder of drug startups.

Nearly two decades later, the two have reunited. They’re behind a new biotech company called Moonwalk Biosciences, which on Thursday launched with $57 million in funding and technology based on Zhang’s work at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

In making its debut, Moonwalk joins several other startups aiming to edit what’s known as the epigenome, the chemicals and proteins that turn genes on and off without altering DNA. Scientists and drug companies have long sought to target these molecular switches, but with only limited successes.

Companies like Moonwalk and its peers, among them Chroma Medicine and Tune Therapeutics, intend to use gene editing technology to help do the job. The goal of these startups is to make more subtle and temporary changes than using CRISPR to cut DNA, a strategy that can cause unintended edits.

“I think of the epigenome as a software of the genome,” Aravanis said, likening its ability to control gene expression to the technology used to encode websites and computer programs.

Moonwalk plans to harness that software with computing tools that, Aravanis claims, will help the company examine changes that occur during a biological process called methylation. Moonwalk will use that information to uncover which areas of the epigenome to target, and then go after them with editing technology licensed from Zhang at the Broad.

“People have tried to modify the epigenome, and there have been successes in the past,” he said. “But the broad technology to characterize it completely, modify it at multiple sites and to do it very precisely, that’s new.”

Moonwalk is backed by Alpha Wave Partners as well as a group that includes Arch Venture Partners and GV, two venture firms that have previously backed other gene editing companies. Arch was a founding investor in Illumina and has supported other startups Zhang co-founded, including Beam Therapeutics.

“It is rare to have the privilege to back two founders […] together, each of whom Arch has backed before in successful companies that broke scientific ground,” said Arch managing director and co-founder Robert Nelsen, in a statement.

Moonwalk is based in South San Francisco and has tapped some former Grail executives to lead the company, including Aravanis as CEO. Its name refers to the dance move popularized by pop star Michael Jackson in the 1980s, as well as the company’s work studying the changes the body undergoes through disease.

“Sometimes to move forward you have to move backwards,” Aravanis said.