Cloverleaf Bio Raises $33M Seed for tRNA Cancer Therapeutics
Fundraise Insider tracks newly funded startups each week and delivers verified sales leads of C-suite contacts straight to your inbox, so you reach the right people while the funding is still fresh. See pricing.
Cloverleaf Bio, an RNA therapeutics company developing engineered transfer RNA payloads for cancer, has closed a $33 million Seed round. The company is headquartered in New Haven, Connecticut, and announced the financing on September 8, 2026.
4BIO Capital led the upsized and oversubscribed round. Three pharmaceutical venture arms took meaningful stakes: AbbVie Ventures, Eli Lilly and Company, and Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund. Draper Associates, Mission BioCapital, and American Cancer Society BrightEdge also invested. Having three major pharma investors participate at the preclinical stage signals how closely the industry is watching both the science and the founding team.
The money will fund two lead programs. The first is an inhibitory tRNA asset, CLB-001, aimed at hepatocellular carcinoma, which the company plans to carry through early clinical testing. The second is an antibody-tRNA conjugate targeting colorectal cancer, which will advance through preclinical development.
Cloverleaf’s platform works by selectively and durably inhibiting several RNA-modifying enzymes, a class of proteins that cancer cells become unusually dependent on as they multiply. In preclinical studies, CLB-001 showed substantially greater potency and selectivity for cancer cells than for healthy ones. It stayed active in cancer cell lines resistant to both frontline chemotherapy and current-generation ADC payloads, a relevant result given how often colorectal cancer develops treatment resistance. The compound also outperformed frontline standard of care in hepatocellular carcinoma and lung adenocarcinoma models at much lower doses, and animal tolerability studies showed no rise in liver damage markers and no systemic toxicity across the doses tested.
Cloverleaf is a spinout from Yale University in Connecticut. Its early research was supported by the National Cancer Institute’s Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs. The company was founded by Austin Draycott, PhD, who serves as CEO; Cole Lewis, PhD, chief scientific officer; and Wendy Gilbert, PhD, chair of the scientific advisory board. That board and the wider advisory network include Albert Lai of AbbVie Ventures, Luisa Escobar-Hoyos and Wendy Gilbert of Yale, and Michael McCaman, formerly head of CMC at Intellia. Over the longer term, the company sees applications beyond oncology in neurodegenerative and fibrotic diseases.
CROs, CDMOs, and other suppliers to early-stage drug developers can get verified contacts at newly funded biotech companies like this one each week through B2B Lead Generation For BioTech.