AI/ML tools, startups, investors and companies transforming drug discovery 🪁 (2nd part)
A newsletter about Science, Technology and AI Drug Discovery
For the first part of this newsletter: AI/ML tools, startups, investors and companies transforming drug discovery.
“But DNA isn’t really like that. It’s more like a script. Think of Romeo and Juliet, for example. In 1936 George Cukor directed Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer in a film version. Sixty years later Baz Luhrmann directed Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in another movie version of this play. Both productions used Shakespeare’s script, yet the two movies are entirely different. Identical starting points, different outcomes.”
By Nessa Carey, The Epigenetics Revolution
News
🏈 Breakthrough AI Can Now Predict Alzheimer's Up to 7 Years in Advance
⚾️ How Boltzmann Is Using GenAI To Speed Up Drug Discovery In India
🏐 SCOPE: FDA facilitates AI and ML use for clinical trials and drug development
🏉 AI firm Relation Therapeutics has $35M in new seed financing in a round led by DCVC and co-led by NVIDIA’s venture, NVentures
🎱 Cognizant partners with NVIDIA to boost drug discovery with AI
Compound VC
Compound VC (New York, 2016) is a New York-based seed fund that invests in startup and early-stage technology companies. They are a team of investors, researchers and operators using their domain expertise, network and prior experiences to help founders solve previously unsolvable technical problems, communicate these breakthroughs to the world and scale commercialization. The managing partner is Michael Dempsey, previously an investment analyst at Crane Partners and a Research & Data Analysis at CB Insights. The founder is David Hirsch.
Compound is a research and thesis-driven fund investing in frontier tech across AI/ML, robotics, crypto and bio. They have a public database of areas they are currently tracking and always adding to it. They invest into:
Bionaut Labs (US, 2017) is offering remote-controlled micro-robots revolutionizing the treatment of central nervous system disorders, targeting deep brain structures safely and precisely. To date, Bionaut has raised over $70M and is preparing for clinical trials.
Cellvoyant (UK, 2021) is an AI-first biotechnology company with a mission to create novel stem cell-based therapies for chronic diseases by using AI-first live cell imaging to predict and optimize stem cell differentiation, to controllably manufacture any cell and tissue in the body at scale. University of Bristol spinout CellVoyant raised £7.6M in seed funding.
Culture Biosciences (US, 2016) has a proprietary, fully integrated platform that combines bioreactors, cloud-based software and services to offer client companies around the world access to predictable, and scalable bioprocess development. To date, Culture has raised over $100M.
Imvitro (France, 2019) is an early stage Deep Tech start-up based in Paris that wants to facilitate in vitro fertilization (IVF) using AI to help the increasing number of people with fertility issues. As of today, IVF is one of their main defined medical hopes but only works around 20-30% of time in Europe, which entails patients having to repeat this emotional, expensive and lengthy process.
Juvena Therapeutics (US, 2017) is a computationally-driven biopharmaceutical company on a mission to research, develop and commercialize disease-modifying biologics to treat chronic and metabolic diseases. They have a a fully integrated, end-to-end AI-enabled platform that combines a diverse protein library, in silico mapping of secreted proteins to specific disease phenotypes, in vitro human cell screening, in vivo pharmacology and protein engineering capabilities. Juvena Therapeutics has raised a total funding of $50M over 2 rounds.
Pear Bio (UK, 2017) analyzes patient tumor samples and data with a proprietary computational biology platform to deconvolute complex cancer biology and drive patient-centric functional precision medicine and drug discovery. The platform uses microphysiological systems and 3D computer vision to measure cancer progression over time. Pear Bio cultures patient tumor samples with matched blood into 3D immune-microtumors to test potential treatment options and combinations ex vivo. A proprietary computer vision/DL pipeline finds image-based spatial biomarkers in time-course 3D microscopy data of patient 3D immune-microtumors. Pear Bio has raised a total of $19.8M in funding over 9 rounds.
Spaero (US, 2020) provides scientists with a fool-proof way to scale automation using liquid handlers already in their lab. Teams can rapidly iterate on complex experiments with ease - ensuring accuracy as protocols and inputs change. Spaero Bio has raised $2M.
⛳️ Building bio platforms in 2024 by
(LinkedIn) an investor at Compound VC:🏏 Focus on platform differentiation (for example therapeutics focused) and show with your products (target and assets) why what you’re building is different from anything in the market.
🏑 Always create a data package sooner rather than later and show from both in vitro, cell and animal models that your asset is exceptional in its own right and compared to standard-of-care and clinical assets.
🏒 Choose indications which allow early PoC (proof of concept) validation that your platform works + bonus points if there’s a MoA (mechanism of action) with an indication with a larger disease population.
🏌 Another PoC is partnering on the platform and on the assets. This doesn’t have to be on the first round of funding (assets matter more here).
Let’s move to Italy now 🍕