Weekly TechBio News: AI/ML tools and startups for preclinical drug discovery
An overview of AI/ML startups 🚀 transforming preclinical drug discovery
Welcome Back!
“Biology sees right and wrong as the same color in different light.”
➡️ Startups Using AI Models During Preclinical Studies
✅ The Toronto based biotech company BenchSci founded in 2015 is utilizing AI to fight the data reproducibility crisis from unreliable antibodies (Reproducibility crisis: Blame it on the antibodies), an important issue during the preclinical phase of drug development.
Backed by Google’s AI fund Gradient Ventures, the ASCEND platform—BenchSci’s end-to-end SaaS platform—enables the discovery of biological connections, reduces unnecessary experiments and uncovers risks at the preclinical phase. ASCEND is the industry standard for antibody selection and over 50,000 scientists in 16 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies and more than 4,500 academic institutions use ASCEND to navigate antibody data to plan more successful experiments, with proven savings of millions per year in hard costs alone, since antibodies constitute 40-50% of reagent failures. Moreover, ASCEND helps also with exploring biological connections between proteins, pathways, disease and other entities, with prioritizing targets and with validating hypotheses.
On May 25, 2023, BenchSci announced a US $70M Series D funding round (for a total of $170M) led by Generation Investment Management, with participation from existing investors iNovia Capital, TCV, Golden Ventures and F-Prime Capital.
On January 12, 2024, BenchSci announced in a LinkedIn post its decision to eliminated 17% of its workforce, or 70 jobs, as a result of shifts in the economic environment, operational efficiencies and adaptation to technological advancements, specifically Generative AI (BenchSci Layoffs: 17% of staff axed, investing in generative AI).
✅ Berkeley Lights now part of Bruker Cellular Analysis provides AI solutions for antibody discovery, cell line development, cell therapy development and synthetic biology for life science research.
Back in March 2023, Berkeley Lights and IsoPlexis merged, and PhenomeX was formed, and as a result The Beacon Optofluidic System (for moving cells without physical contact) by Berkeley Lights and The Protein Barcoding Suite (for evaluating the functional phenotypes of individual cells) by IsoPlexis were brought together. Then on August 17, 2023, Bruker entered into a merger agreement with PhenomeX, to acquire functional cell biology company PhenomeX for a total equity value of $108M, that will serve as Bruker’s (NASDAQ: BRKR) entry point into single-cell research and boost its spatial biology programs (by also acquiring Canopy Bioscience and investing in Acuity Spatial Genomics).
Bruker Cellular Analysis, in order to understand the phenome (set of phenotypes) is now offering:
Bruker Cellular Analysis' Optofluidic technology to accelerate your product development by analyzing the phenotype and genotype of single cells or clones and generating insights by rapidly screening 1000s of cells at once.
Proteomic Barcoding Product Suite to capture highly multiplexed cytokine, chemokine and phosphoprotein signatures from single cells to predict disease progression, treatment resistance and therapeutic efficacy.
Optofluidic Workflows: Beacon for antibody discovery, cell line development, T-cell profiling and synthetic biology.
Proteomic Barcoding Solutions: IsoSpark for IsoCode immune cell behavior, IsoCode intracellular Signaling Insights, CodePlex for high impact protein screening and Meteor for quantitative bulk proteomics.
Bruker (founded on September 7, 1960, in Karlsruhe, Germany) is advancing life sciences with Green-Tech and AI.
Other companies for preclinical studies offering single-cell technologies are:
10x Genomics, Inc (NASDAQ:TXG) is a leading life-science technology company developing and selling instruments, consumables and software for analyzing gene expression in cells, and consists of three platforms: the Chromium platform for single cells sequencing that allows scientists to see the unique gene expression patterns of each cell; the Visium platform for spatial analysis of tissue sample for whole transcriptome analysis at single cell-scale resolution; and the recently released Xenium platform for subcellular spatial mapping, to characterize up to 5,000 genes in cells and tissues with ultra precise single cell spatial imaging. For more about 10x Genomics:
Another AI drug discovery company utilizing data at single-cell resolution to identify cell-state transitions that drive diseases is Cellarity, a life sciences company founded by Flagship Pioneering. Until now, the dominant approach in drug discovery has been to reduce disease biology into a single molecular target and then leverage high-throughput screening to identify molecules that bind to these targets. But at Cellarity, they focus on the whole cell because, most often, a disease isn’t driven by one mechanism or protein, accordingly they use single-cell technologies to identify the cellular drivers of the transition from health to disease and then apply DL models to create drugs that reverse disease at the cellular level. On July 27, 2023, Cellarity announced that The Galien Foundation, the premier global institution dedicated to honoring innovators in life sciences, named Cellarity a 2023 Prix Galien USA Award nominee for "Best Startup. In October, 2023, Cellarity announced a partnership with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to drive innovation in ML algorithms for single-cell analysis via support of the Open Problems in Single-Cell Analysis initiative. Finally on January 4, 2024, Novo Nordisk A/S (ETR: NOV) and Cellarity announced the expansion of their research collaborations that aims to unravel novel biological drivers of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and will leverage Cellarity’s platform to develop a small molecule therapy against this disease.
On May 17, 2023, Deepcell announced the launch of the REM-I Platform, a cell morphology analysis and sorting platform which comprises the REM-I benchtop instrument with Human Foundation Model and Axon data suite, bringing together single cell imaging, sorting and high-dimensional analysis (Deepcell Launches AI-Powered Single Cell Analysis Platform to Accelerate Cell Biology Discovery and Catalyze Field of Morpholomics). Deepcell’s platform combines AI, proprietary microfluidics, high resolution optics and a growing cell atlas with over 1 billion images to analyze and sort cells based on visual features. On January 8, 2024, Deepcell announced a research collaboration with NVIDIA to accelerate the development and adoption of advanced computer vision solutions in life sciences. Deepcell, which already uses the NVIDIA A4000 and NVIDIA AI technology, will incorporate NVIDIA AI into its single cell analysis technology, working collaboratively with NVIDIA to co-develop new uses for generative AI and multimodal applications in cell biology. On May 2, 2024, Deepcell announced the first commercial placement of the REM-I platform at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam.
CellPly from Italy has VivaCyteTM, a revolutionary fully automated analytical platform for profiling the immune cell function. Through the use of proprietary microfluidic technologies, highly-automated analytical instruments and AI-powered image and data analytics, the Cellply platform defines the function of the immune system one cell at a time, combining functional data with other multiplex data and providing an unprecedented single-cell analytical solution. The AI-assisted cell detection and classification, is followed by a powerful dashboard enabling deep single-cell multiplex and time-lapse analytics. Cellply has just been selected as one of the 12 bio deep tech companies to join the New Biotech Platforms group within the wider EIC Scaling Club. Cellply will join 120 EU-based deep tech focused companies, curated by the EIC, with the potential to build world-class businesses solving major global challenges.
DeepLife is an early stage startup founded in 2019 in France and developing the first SaaS platform for Digital Twin of cells, combining state-of-the-art DL algorithms on multi-omics sequencing data, public and private cell atlases and proprietary DL-based cell engineering tools. Their platform is an all-in-one solution offering: DeepLife Datastore™, DeepLife Analysis™ and DeepLife Virtual Cell™. Beyond using single cell RNA sequencing data, the DeepLife’s Digital Twin is set to expand and encapsulate additional data modalities, including genomics, proteomics and metabolomics, enabling unparalleled simulation of cellular states with each omics layer processed using their advanced LLM. Their final goal is to supplement in vitro testing with in silico simulations and rapidly discover molecular triggers for drug discovery, for that reason they are working closely with biotech and pharmaceutical companies and collaborating actively with the academic community by publishing papers and providing open access to our platform’s features and data.
PhenomicAI (Canada, 2017) is using advanced ML tools for processing imaging, RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics data to understand the biology of single-cells sitting in complex multi-cell systems. This allows them to explore how cells communicate with each other, both in human tissue samples and disease relevant experimental models. For example, they can understand how cancer cells hijack fibroblasts, a key cell-type of the tumor stroma, or how hijacked fibroblasts then shut down T-cells that are usually programmed to attack the cancer cells, and in the end understand in which drug targets one should invest time and money on. On November 29, 2023, Phenomic and Boehringer Ingelheim announced a 500M collaboration to utilize Phenomic’s single-cell RNA computing platform, dubbed scTx, to unlock new targets. On November 30, 2023, Phenomic scored a second deal with Astellas (TYO: 4503) owned cell therapy biotech Xyphos Biosciences to develop cancer therapies.
✅ Biognosys—founded in 2008 as a spin-off from the lab of proteomics pioneer Ruedi Aebersold at ETH Zurich—offers a diverse range of proteomics solutions that can help you address your key research objectives for biomarker discovery and drug development. So far, Biognosys has analyzed a vast amount of proteomics data and developed an industry-leading understanding of the proteome across various species and biological matrices. Thanks to their biological expertise and data analytics capabilities they are the proteomics knowledge provider of choice to support biomarker discovery and drug development.
Regarding biomarker discovery, their TrueDiscovery® platform utilizes Hyper Reaction Monitoring/HRM™ that enables specific and unbiased discovery through the quantification of complete proteomes and phospho-proteomes. Further, the platform leverages their flagship software, Spectronaut®, for AI/ML enhanced proteomics data analysis. This service offers a choice of depth for the identification of differentially regulated proteins in a hypothesis-free manner. They also provide highly multiplexed targeted proteomics with absolute quantification for customized panels of proteins.
In January 2023, Bruker Corporation—an American manufacturer of scientific instruments for molecular and materials research, as well as for industrial and applied analysis—made a majority-ownership investment in Biognosys and functions ever since as a strategic investor.
On April 4, 2024, Biognosys and Alamar Biosciences, Inc, a company powering precision proteomics to enable the earliest detection of disease, announced a strategic partnership in the field of biofluid proteomics biomarkers, that brings together Biognosys' expertise in unbiased discovery through data independent acquisition mass spectrometry (DIA-MS) and Alamar's cutting-edge immunoassays (Biognosys and Alamar Biosciences Forge Strategic Partnership in Proteomics to Advance Biopharma and Precision Medicine Research). Finally on August 29, 2024, Biognosys announced the commercial availability of NULISA proteomics assays for biomarker discovery in plasma and other biofluids. NULISA is a proprietary high-sensitivity proteomics platform developed by Alamar Biosciences. Under the strategic partnership announced earlier in 2024, Biognosys is a provider of choice for NULISA multiplex assay services (Biognosys Announces Commercial Availability of NULISA™ Proteomics Assay Services for Biomarker Research).
✅ Selvita is one of the largest preclinical contract research organizations in Europe, providing multidisciplinary support in resolving the unique challenges of research within drug discovery, regulatory studies, as well as research and development. The Selvita Group owns Ardigen (Poland, 2015), a bioinformatics company harnessing advanced AI methods for novel precision medicine, by offering specialized services for immunology, microbiome, biomedical imaging and digital CRO. Ardigen’s Biomedical Imaging Platform integrates the most recent advancements in AI (computer vision and cheminformatics) with molecular biology and medicinal chemistry, bridging the gap between cell imaging and small molecule design, combining molecular structures, high content screening images and omics data.
Ardigen together with Janssen Research & Development, LLC, announced in 2023 the publication of groundbreaking findings from their collaborative study:
In 2024, Immudex and Ardigen announced partnership on Immune Profiling multi-omics data analysis services.
In 2024, they announce their latest publication “Harnessing the Power of AI in Precision Medicine: NGS-based Therapeutic Insights for Colorectal Cancer Cohort” where they explore innovative approaches for identifying therapeutic targets in colorectal cancer (CRC) using AI. And
In October 2024, Ardigen opened its new office at Sternbacha 1, Krakow, a space that signifies far more than just a physical expansion, since this milestone marks an exciting new chapter in their journey, supporting the continuous growth and commitment to pushing the boundaries of biotechnology and AI.
✅ Genome Biologics (Belgium, 2016) a resident company of Johnson & Johnson Innovation - JLABS develops solutions for preclinical drug discovery. One of the startup’s products is GENIMPAS a cloud-based, in-silico accelerated drug repositioning and development platform that uses pattern recognition and ML to match compound databases (transcriptomics, GWAS, CVS and protein interaction) and drug discovery pipelines with profiles of disease-relevant genes. GENIMAPS utilizes a customized pattern recognition and real-time ML algorithms to perform matches with ever increasing accuracy and precision, and is directly coupled to the GENISYST for accelerated preclinical drug testing platform.
GENISYST is a patented technology for in vitro and in vivo multiplexed disease modeling, applied to modulate a combination of coding genes, microRNAs and non-coding RNAs in specific tissues or cell lineages of the adult, newborn or embryo. GENISYST is also applicable for in vitro 2D and 3D (human tissue organoid) cell culture based drug screens and is also applicable in small (mice, rats) and large animals (pig, sheep, NHP) preclinical studies. When coupled to GENIMAPS, GENISYST can potentially bring a repurposed/orphan drug into Phase II or III Clinical studies in 6-18 months.
✅ Emerald Cloud Lab (ECL) is a warehouse with million-dollar robots and the only remotely-operated research facility that can handle all aspects of daily lab work, from designing experiments to data acquisition and analysis. Users can log on to their website from anywhere in the world, enter the experimental protocol that they’d like to perform, and the robots will take care of the rest. In this way, entire experiments, that would normally take weeks or months, are performed in hours with higher precision, since ECL (California, 2010) operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and is increasing productivity by 300%.
In particular, ECL offers access to 200 different kinds of high-throughput scientific instruments (for a monthly fee that costs less than a single piece of lab gear), combined with the facility’s nonstop operations. Plus it has an automated cloud system that provides the ECL staff the same benefits it provides customers.
The two ECL co-founders Brian Frezza and DJ Kleinbaum are now sharing their lessons starting a new ECL with academics, in a collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) to build the world’s first cloud lab in an academic setting. On 22 Aug, 2023, the world's largest cloud lab provided open access to its proprietary Symbolic Lab Language (SLL), considered the most developed and widely used language for remotely controlling experiments in a cloud lab.
✅ Synthace (UK) is offering Antha, a cloud-based software platform for automating and improving the success rate of biological processes, by spreading biological information in a repeatable way, linking lab equipment, protocols and processes, thereby allowing vast and speedy development, enhancing productivity. The Synthace digital experiment platform lets you design powerful experiments, run them in your lab, then automatically build structured data and no code is necessary.
On May 24, 2023, Synthace announced the successful integration of their platform with OpenAI’s ChatGPT to let scientists use a natural language interface to describe their intent, use AI to design complex experiments and then run those experiments on lab equipment. On September 20, 2023, Synthace released a comprehensive analyst report titled Lab automation & experimentation in life science R&D 2023-2024 shedding light on the industry challenges faced by researchers and highlighting opportunities for improvement. The report can be downloaded here 📩.
On September 08, 2024, SPT Labtech, a Cambridge-based global leader in the design, development and manufacture of automated instrumentation and consumables for life science applications, has formed a key strategic alliance with Synthace (SPT Labtech and Synthace unite to boost drug discovery), to enhance the accessibility and effectiveness of Design of Experiments (DOE) in the life sciences community.
✅ Arctoris (US/UK, 2016) is a service for academic research groups and biotech companies, allowing scientists to directly configure a wide range of research experiments online, and receive their results and detailed methods reports immediately. Arctoris is not only capable of screening but is actually designed for fundamental research, encompassing a wide range of techniques: AI model training and validation, cell and molecular biology assays, biotech and target-based assays. In other words, is a fully automated laboratory that generates robust, reliable, reproducible data at scale, and is a globally operating platform company with an internal pipeline of drug discovery.
In 2021, IBM Research and Arctoris announced they are investigating the application of AI and automation to accelerate closed loop molecule discovery by combing IBM’s RXN for Chemistry (an AI online platform leveraging state-of-the-art NLP architectures to automate synthetic chemistry) with Arctoris’ Ulysses platform leveraging robotic experiment execution and digital data capture technologies across cell and molecular biology and biochemistry/biophysics. On March 23, 2022, Cyclica, a biotech with the vision to advance the most robust and sustainable drug discovery pipeline, and Arctoris have agreed to expand their partnership to progress drug discovery programs for novel neurodegenerative targets with a focus on Alzheimer’s disease. On October 04, 2022, Arctoris has appointed three globally recognized experts in Alzheimer’s disease, ML applied to closed loop discovery and automated chemistry as members of its Scientific Advisory Board: Professor John Davis (University of Oxford), Professor Rafael Gómez Bombarelli (MIT) and Dr Teodoro Laino (IBM Research).
On October 4, 2024, Arctoris entered into a joint partnership with SpiroChem AG (Arctoris and SpiroChem enter into strategic partnership to accelerate drug discovery). The partnership combines Arctoris' automated biology capabilities with SpiroChem's medicinal and synthetic chemistry platforms including photochemistry, electrochemistry, flow chemistry and parallel solid-phase synthesis. Finally on September 12, 2024, Arctoris announced it has acquired the majority of Eli Lilly’s San Diego-based Lilly Life Sciences Studio’ laboratory (“Science Studio”) (Arctoris acquires Eli Lilly ‘Life Science Studio’ laboratory). Arctoris by acquiring the Science Studio biology platform added five new automated biochemistry modules, a new high-throughput screening module and an additional automated BSL2 cell biology module to its existing setup. Furthermore, it has increased its compound storage capacity to 4 million compounds by automating compound storage, combining Hamilton Verso and Beckman Access station technologies and plate formatting capabilities using three Echo dispensers.
✅ Strateos (California, 2012), that started as Transcriptic (a SaaS-based biotechnology company providing robotic solutions for biology labs) on June 2019 announced a merger with 3Scan—a digital 3D tissue model specialist—to form the company Strateos, that combines the engineering capabilities of the two previous companies to help automate chemical, biological and 3D image analysis in a closed loop robotic laboratory. Strateos smart labs are located in Menlo Park and San Diego, California, which together represent more than 14,000 square feet of laboratory space and 200-plus state-of-the-art research instruments tailored to the application needs of small-molecule and biologics drug discovery, cell and gene therapies and synthetic biology.
In 2022, Strateos that is considered a pioneer in the development of remote access laboratories and lab automation software for life science research, announced the availability of an integrated solution for small molecule discovery programs seeking a faster, automated way to perform Design, Make, Test and Analyze (DMTA) cycles “Closing the Loop from Idea to Data and Accelerating Cycle Times for Faster Drug Discovery”. The DMTA cycle is a common workflow to optimize a company’s identified hits towards clinical candidates.
In 2023, the company appointed Alexander K. Arrow, MD, CFA, as Chief Financial Officer to play a key role in leading the company’s business and finance strategy focused on growth and new investments. The company has also named Juliet M. Moritz, MPH, Vice President, Project Management Office, reflecting the significant demand by large pharmaceutical companies and CROs for deployment of Strateos Cloud Lab Automation-as-a-Service Platform.
On April 18, 2023, Strateos announced a strategic shift aimed at meeting the growing demand from its life sciences customers seeking to establish on-site implementations of fully automated cloud labs that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. In line with this shift, Strateos is reorganizing and expanding its business to focus on design-and-deployment engagements (Strateos Announces Strategic Shift to Focus on Customer Demand for On-Site Cloud Labs). At the center of the Strateos technology offering is LodeStar™, a scalable software platform that enables companies to manage their on-premises research operations and instruments to run scientific workflows via the cloud at enterprise scale while also creating machine- and human-actionable data streams under FAIR data standards.
✅ CelerisTx (Celeris Therapeutics Inc) is exploiting cutting-edge ML to design PICs or Proximity-inducing compounds, which are a novel class of therapeutic modalities able to hijack naturally occurring biological machines. PICs allow us to modulate the activity of processes like autophagy, folding via chaperones, lysosomal and ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis and hence provide unprecedented potential to further expand therapeutic horizons.
CelerisTx’s platform Celeris One exploits the potential of PICs with accurate predictions of biomolecular interactions and the expansion of chemical space. Moreover, Celeris One has three modules: Xanthos the platform’s design engine, Hephaistos the platform’s synthesis engine and Hades the platform’s biological information engine. By using the Xanthos platform for design, they start with a protein target sequence, determine 3D structures, predict ligand binding, generate linkers, predict ternary complexes and refine proximity-inducing compounds selection through several layers of filters including molecular dynamics and QSAR.
In 2022, Celeris Therapeutics announced a collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim to develop next-generation targeted protein degraders and with Merck KGaA (ETR: MRK) in the field of early drug discovery using CelerisTx graph-based AI platform for discovering and designing novel small molecule binders and bifunctional degraders.
On September 15, 2023, Celeris Therapeutics appointed James Field (the founder of LabGenius) as a Board Director with expertise in TechBio Scaling, Robotics and AI. Celeris founded in Graz, Austria in 2021 is headquartered in Silicon Valley, California.
✅ Aiforia (Helsinki Finland, 2013) by analyzing images uploaded to its cloud is allowing researchers to detect any visible feature or pattern at scale—including in tissues and cells—in order to understand pathophysiology. Aiforia’s platform brings together AI and high-performance cloud computing and assists image-based diagnostics by providing efficient and scalable solutions, enabling new preclinical discoveries and clinical support with highly accurate and consistent data. For example with Aiforia Create, Lundbeck pharmaceuticals performed neuroscientific histopathological analysis of alpha-synuclein (a neuronal protein linked to Parkinson’s disease) during preclinical studies, accomplishing high speed and accuracy demonstrating the AI-based quantification was as accurate as the manual method in quantifying α-synuclein.
On June 21, 2021, Epredia—a global precision cancer diagnostics company—announced that it has entered into a distribution agreement for Aiforia's AI based pathology software, in order to distribute Aiforia's portfolio of preclinical and clinical pathology tools globally.
In January 2024, Aiforia entered into an exclusive licensing agreement with Mayo Clinic to globally commercialize a specialized AI model for predicting the recurrence of colorectal cancer (Mayo Clinic lines up AI collabs in colon, breast cancer with Aiforia). Aiforia suggested in its announcement that by using the AI model to screen for colon cancer recurrence could reduce both the costs associated with the overuse of pricey chemotherapy drugs and the sometimes dangerous side effects of the drugs themselves, by funneling chemo treatments only to those patients who are expected to benefit most.
✅ A UK and Australia-based startup, Concr, allows cross-talk between biopharma, diagnostics companies and healthcare providers by unifying data on a single platform to address meaningful questions in precision oncology. Its platform FarrSight® integrates diverse data to generate actionable insights, ranging from biomarker discovery during preclinical development to patient outcome prediction in clinical trials. Concr’s mission (recognised as a top Cambridge spinout) is to enable personalization of cancer treatment by providing advanced analytics tools for precise and accurate response predictions, in pre-clinical models and in patients, by leveraging advanced computational methods from astrophysics to integrate vast and complex research and real-world data to model human biology. They identify new drug indications and combinations using minimal data. They define patient-specific biomarkers of response to existing and emerging therapies. And they de-risk clinical drug development with in-silico trials, digital twins and synthetic controls. FarrSight® is their cloud-based platform that effectively integrates diverse data parcels to generate meaningful insights.
On November 7, 2024, Concr announced its partnership with CariGenetics (CariGenetics Partners With Concr Tech Firm). Through the collaboration between Concr and CariGenetics, they will expand use of vital genetic and molecular data on Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) from the Caribbean region, filling a critical gap in diversity for global healthcare and the pharmaceutical industry. By linking clinical, genetic and molecular TNBC data from the Caribbean (a region historically underrepresented in genomics and AI research) CariGenetics is actively addressing these disparities, ensuring that AI-driven solutions in healthcare benefit populations globally. CariGenetics is a genetics company transforming the way pharmaceutical companies develop drugs to include non-european data.
✅ Vivodyne (US, 2020) enables human testing before clinical trials with AI‑scale testing on lab-grown human organs. With over 20 human organ models of health and disease that span the major organ systems, their models mimic native human functions and phenotypes to accurately capture the effects of new therapeutics and predict clinical outcomes. In particular, each of their proprietary Data Engine robotic machines tests on 10,000+ independent human tissues at a time, yielding vivarium-scale output in the footprint of a lab bench. Then their AI platform is powered by an active learning system that can identify and produce the most useful human training data on-demand to refine its accuracy. By integrating data from 3D phenomics, single-cell sequencing and proteomics Vivodyne deeply understands and maps human complexity. Back in November 2023, Vivodyne raised $38M in total seed financing, led by Khosla Ventures with participation from CS Ventures, Bison Ventures, MBX Capital and Kairos Ventures.
✅ Headquartered in Cardiff, UK and with offices in Boston, MA, Antiverse is using ML to engineer novel antibodies against difficult targets such as GPCRs and ion channels (AI de novo discovery). After building 100s of stable cell lines for antibody discovery, cell lines that can be switched on (tetracycline-inducible) to begin receptor expression, Antiverse has reached high accuracy with their generative models from the distribution of their experimental data, enabling for effective target-specific library designs. Their next-generation computational antibody design technology for challenging drug targets, including G-protein coupled receptors and ion channels, allows them to move from target identification to functional antibody in just 6 months.
Since its is difficult to discover antibodies against GPCRs receptors because of cells with low receptor count and because of antibody libraries with poor specificity, at Antiverse they have built a discovery platform that develops cells with high receptor counts (1M per cell) and antibody libraries (de-novo target-specific libraries focused on functional epitopes) with high specificity against each target. Subsequently, in their lab they screen the target-specific libraries against cells with high receptor counts to reach a high number of binders and the outputs are then sent for deep sequencing and AI-based clustering.
On October, 11, 2023, Antiverse and GlobalBio INC, an antibody engineering company developing methods to engineer improved and more developable therapeutic antibodies, announced that they will be extending their collaboration to advance immune checkpoint inhibitors in cancer therapy (Antiverse and GlobalBio, Inc. extend collaboration to advance antibody cancer therapeutics).
On November 5, 2024, Nxera Pharma Co. Ltd (TYO: 4565), formerly known as Sosei Group or Sosei Heptares, and Antiverse announced a multi-target partnership and licensing agreement to design antibodies for G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) (Nxera Pharma and Antiverse Enter Collaboration To Design). The collaboration will combine Antiverse’s generative AI antibody design expertise with Nxera’s NxWave™ platform, a powerful tool for GPCR target selection, validation and structural determination. Their first project will be aimed at designing antibodies with agonistic function for a challenging GPCR target.
On October 15, 2024, Antiverse announced it has added £3.5M ($4.6M) to its seed funding, to facilitate the company’s growth and continued development of its antibody design programmes (Antiverse Raises £3.5M ($4.6M) to Advance Generative AI Antibody Design Platform). The latest investment round was led by i&i Biotech Fund I (i&i Bio) and Kadmos Capital, with additional investment from existing investors InnoSpark Ventures, UKI2S (managed by Future Planet Capital), Tensor Ventures, and AngelHub. This brings the total equity financing raised to £7.2M ($10.1M).
✅ IPA (1983, Canada) (ImmunoPrecise Antibodies Ltd) is a progressive, scientific Contract Research Organization (CRO) that represents a hub of biotherapeutic intelligence that includes a hybrid of experts and technologies, in the science and business of bioplatform-based discovery. They provide highly specialized full-continuum therapeutic antibody discovery, development and out-licensing services (Talem)—with advanced omics and complex intelligence technology (LENSᵃⁱ) that provide greater efficiency and accuracy than ever before.
🖇️ LENSai™ Integrated Intelligence Technology powered by HYFTs® (Universal FingerprintsTM)—that seamlessly integrates massive data from diverse data sources to enhance LLMs and accelerate antibody discovery—was developed by BioStrand, founded in Belgium in 2019, and is an independently operating subsidiary of IPA at the intersection of biotech discovery, biotherapeutics and AI.
(BioStrand: The Ultimate Convenience in Multi-Omics Data Search and Analysis 🔝)
🖇️ Talem Therapeutics LLC is also a subsidiary of IPA and is focused on the discovery and development of next-generation, human, monoclonal, therapeutic antibodies. For more about Talem’s pipeline: AI-powered drug discovery: update (X).
For more:
And AI/ML companies for preclinical drug discovery for cell and gene therapies:
