Eligo Bioscience Gets $5M Grant to Advance Gene-Editing Skin Therapy Using Bacteria

The funding supports development of Eligo’s topical gene delivery system, which programs skin-resident bacteria to locally produce therapeutic biologics.

Eligo Bioscience has been awarded a $5 million grant under the French government’s "Innovations in Biotherapies and Bioproduction" initiative, part of the France 2030 strategy and administered by Bpifrance (French public sector investment bank). The grant will support industrial scale-up of Eligo’s proprietary platform that delivers gene therapies directly to skin microbiota for local treatment of immune-mediated skin diseases.

The Paris-based company has developed a topical formulation that delivers protein-based nanoparticles containing DNA to commensal bacteria located within hair follicles. Once inside these bacteria, the payload programs them to produce therapeutic proteins in situ, enabling highly localized treatment. Eligo is currently advancing this platform toward late-stage clinical trials in moderate to severe acne vulgaris and expanding into broader immuno-dermatology indications.

Eligo’s "GEM" Platform

The platform is built around a class of programmable biologics called Eligobiotics, designed to deliver DNA payloads directly into target bacteria within the human microbiome. The platform supports three distinct applications:

• SSAM (Sequence-Specific Anti-Microbials): A CRISPR-based approach that selectively kills harmful bacteria by inducing DNA breaks at specific genomic sites, sparing beneficial microbes.
• GEM (Genome Editing of the Microbiome): A gene-editing strategy that modifies the DNA of target bacterial populations in situ, enabling durable changes to microbial function and supporting therapeutic reprogramming.
• FAME (Function Addition to the Microbiome): A system for introducing genes into skin-resident or gut-resident bacteria to transiently produce therapeutic proteins locally, turning microbes into targeted delivery vehicles.

Together, these modalities allow Eligo to precisely reprogram the composition and behavior of microbial communities at the site of disease, offering a highly localized and modular approach to treating conditions linked to microbiome dysfunction.

To accelerate the bioproduction process, Eligo is partnering with Biose Industries, a microbial CDMO with GMP expertise in complex fermentation. The company’s recent milestones include the publication of its microbiome base-editing platform in Nature, foundational IP covering skin microbiome editing, and a $35 million Series B expansion.

The funding is intended to support exploration of new therapeutic payloads and the development of a broader pipeline addressing chronic inflammatory skin diseases, leveraging the proximity of follicle-dwelling microbes to skin immune cells. Eligo’s approach aims to convert these bacteria into controlled, site-specific producers of high-potency biologics.

Topics: Biotech