Transkaryotic Therapies Inc., a privately held gene therapycompany, was to announce today that it has raised $15.5million in an oversubscribed private placement of convertiblepreferred stock with institutional investors.

Warburg Pincus Capital, which founded the Cambridge, Mass.,company with an undisclosed amount of financing in 1988,increased its stake. New investors include Humana Inc.,Interhealth Ltd., H&Q Healthcare Investors and Skandifund.Hambrecht & Quist Inc. managed the financing.

"We expect this to be the only financing required prior to thecompany going public," said K. Michael Forrest, president. Theformation of a strategic corporate alliance, getting into theclinic more rapidly than mid-1993 as anticipated, or thediscovery of a major disease gene could trigger an IPO, Forrestsaid. TKT is in active discussions with a potential corporatepartner.

TKT's technology uses chemical or physical means to insertgenes into the genome of patients' cells, instead of theretroviral vectors used by many gene therapy companies. Thecompany's initial disease targets are hemophilia, short staturedue to growth hormone deficiency, and anemia due toerythropoietin deficiency. -- Karen Bernstein

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