German mRNA startup SRTD completes €31.5 million seed round

On November 9, SRTD Biotech, an mRNA therapy startup based in Jülich, Germany, announced the completion of a 31.5 million euro seed funding round, which was oversubscribed. The round was co-led by Mérieux Equity Partners through its Mérieux Innovation 2 fund, alongside NRW.BANK and Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Capital Fund. Additional investors included Lilly Ventures, HTGF, and Freiburg-based family office Anobis Asset.

Founded in 2019 by Bernd Hoffmann and Heribert Bohlen, the company employs a strategy where intracellular RNA disease markers trigger mRNA expression, ensuring therapeutic payloads are synthesized exclusively within diseased cells to minimize impact on healthy tissue—a technology the company refers to as seRNA. Its platform consists of three components: proprietary seRNA technology, a delivery platform utilizing fused lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) capable of targeting organs such as the liver, lungs, and brain, and a synthetic biology platform integrating bioinformatics with AI-driven RNA design.

Concurrently with the financing, the company restructured its leadership team: Matthias Alder was appointed CEO, drawing on his previous experience as CEO, COO, and CBO at publicly listed biotechnology firms in the U.S. and Europe; Heinz Koeppl, founder of the synthetic biology platform and a professor at TU Darmstadt, serves as CTO; and Jens Hennecke took on the role of CBO to oversee external R&D partnerships. Alder stated that the funds will be used to advance cofounder Hoffmann’s vision of delivering safer, more differentiated RNA therapies to patient populations currently underserved by existing treatments. NRW.BANK invested via the NRW.Venture EU Tech&Scale fund, which, backed by an InvestEU guarantee, can provide up to an additional 200 million euros to growth-stage enterprises.