Synlogic Inc., a Cambridge startup that is synthetically engineering microbes into disease-fighting drugs, said Wednesday it raised $40 million to help bring a pair of its custom-made treatments for rare metabolic disorders into clinical trials next year.
The funding round, led by investment firm OrbiMed HealthCare Fund Management, brings to $70 million the amount gathered by the year-old Synlogic. It was founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professors Jim Collins and Tim Lu based on science developed in their labs to advance a new class of so-called synthetic biotics to treat multiple diseases.
Synlogic’s first two drug candidates will target Urea Cycle Disorder, an enzyme deficiency affecting about 5,000 people in the United States, and Phenylketonuria, a birth defect affecting fewer than 20,000 people. Both work by correcting inborn metabolic errors in the microbiome, the collective genetic material of the human body’s microorganisms.
The company last week struck a partnership with drug maker AbbVie Inc. to develop synthetic biotic treatments for inflammatory bowel disease, which affects more than 1 million Americans. That effort will be funded by AbbVie using Synlogic’s technology.
“I think this approach has the possibility to create a new class of natural, safe, and potent medicines,’’ Synlogic chief executive Jose Carlos Gutierrez-Ramos said in an interview.
Gutierrez-Ramos, a veteran biopharma executive, came to Synlogic eight months ago from Pfizer Inc., where he was senior vice president of research and development and ran the drug giant’s lab outside Kendall Square in Cambridge. He said Synlogic’s goal is to use its fresh capital infusion to rapidly move its experimental treatments into human testing.
Joining OrbiMed in Tuesday’s funding round is another new investor, Deerfield Management Co., along with founding investors New Enterprise Associates and Cambridge-based Atlas Venture. Another high-profile early investor, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, didn’t participate in the new funding round.
As part of the round, Synlogic said Orbimed private equity partner Chau Q. Khuong will join its board.
Gutierrez-Ramos said the company, based in the Cambridgeport neighborhood, has about 35 employees.
Robert Weisman can be reached at robert.weisman@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeRobW.
