SRTD has closed a €31.5 million seed round led by Mérieux Equity Partners to advance preclinical development of a drug pipeline targeting cancer, autoimmune diseases and fibrosis and to prepare programs for clinical trials. NRW.BANK is contributing €7 million to the financing and the Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund joins as a co-lead investor. Other participants include Lilly Ventures, High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) and the Freiburg-based family office Anobis.
SRTD’s seRNA platform and mechanism
SRTD is developing a technology called selectively expressed RNA (seRNA), an approach that combines mRNA-like protein coding with a molecular recognition system. Unlike conventional mRNA, which can trigger protein production as soon as it enters a cell, seRNA is designed to remain inactive until it encounters specific, disease-associated RNA markers inside a target cell. An antisense segment in the seRNA binds the cell’s own RNA to form a double-stranded RNA that triggers expression of the therapeutic protein. In cells that lack the recognition signal, the seRNA is intended to stay inactive and be degraded. The company describes the design as modular, allowing recognition sequences and therapeutic payloads to be exchanged for different disease applications.
SRTD’s platform is complemented by proprietary fusogenic lipid nanoparticles (fLNPs) aimed at efficient cellular uptake and organ-specific distribution, and by tools for synthetic biology, bioinformatics and AI-assisted RNA design.
Toward the clinic and early proof of concept
The scientific foundations of the technology originated at Forschungszentrum Jülich. SRTD was founded in 2019 by Bernd Hoffmann and Heribert Bohlen; Hoffmann remains closely involved in the scientific development. With the new funding the management team is being expanded: Matthias Alder is taking over as CEO; he previously held leadership positions at publicly listed biotech companies in Europe and the U.S. and, according to the company, has been involved in biotechnology transactions with a combined value of more than $10 billion. Heinz Koeppl, a professor at TU Darmstadt and head of its Center for Synthetic Biology, will become CTO, and Jens Hennecke joins as chief business officer.
A study published in Nature Communications in January 2025 provided an early proof of concept for the seRNA approach. Researchers built an seRNA construct intended to trigger production of caspase-3 selectively in cancer cells; in a mouse model of glioblastoma, direct injection of the construct into early-stage brain tumors significantly reduced tumor size without detectable side effects. The findings demonstrated the platform’s potential to selectively destroy cancer cells while sparing healthy tissue.
Remaining challenges and next steps
SRTD faces a long path from an animal-model proof of concept to a clinically effective and safe therapy. Key challenges for RNA therapeutics remain efficient distribution throughout the body, uptake into the correct cells and avoidance of unwanted immune reactions. Results in mice cannot automatically be translated to humans; SRTD must demonstrate in subsequent preclinical stages that cellular recognition, RNA activation and therapeutic protein production together achieve the required selectivity and safety profile.
NRW.BANK’s expanding life sciences investments
For NRW.BANK, the investment in SRTD is the second publicly announced major biotech commitment this year. In March the development bank invested €3.5 million through NRW.Venture in the seed financing of Dortmund-based iDEL Therapeutics; that company raised a total of €9 million to develop a drug delivery system designed to transport therapeutic substances into the interior of tumor cells, with investors including Gründerfonds Ruhr and KHAN Technology Transfer Fund II and BioMedVC leading the round. With the €7 million committed to SRTD, NRW.BANK has now invested €10.5 million across the two publicly disclosed rounds.
The SRTD investment is being made through the new NRW.Venture EU Tech&Scale fund, available for investment since February 2026. Backed by an InvestEU guarantee from the European Commission, the fund is intended to enable the bank to take larger stakes in capital-intensive technology companies at later financing stages and aims to mobilize up to €200 million in additional funding; total investments of up to €30 million per company are possible. NRW.BANK frames these moves as a signal that public financing should support companies beyond founding and early scientific validation stages, especially in capital-intensive biotechnology where several funding rounds are often needed before a research platform can become a clinical product. SRTD represents an example of an RNA concept developed at Jülich now moving toward an international therapeutic platform.
