Europe: TechBio Investors (2nd part)
Europe: TechBio Investors (2nd part)
MetaphysicalCells: A newsletter about Science, Technology and AI Drug Discovery
For the first part of this newsletter:
“Every creature is a living instruction that runs the algorithm of nature.”
By Joey Lawsin, Inscription by Design
Table of Contents
Kindred Capital (UK)
Blue Yard (Germany)
Backed (UK)
Octopus Ventures (UK)
BioGeneration Ventures (BGV)
Bpifrance (France)
Verve Ventures (EU)
MMC ventures (UK)
✴️ Kindred Capital
Kindred Capital in London is an early stage venture launched in 2015 making investments in mission-driven pre-seed and seed founders and focusing on European technology companies. Every entrepreneur they invest in becomes a co-owner of the fund so they call it ‘equitable venture’. They invest into:
💠 Cradle Bio (Netherlands) exited stealth in 2022 and is using generative AI for protein engineering—enzymes, vaccines, peptides and antibodies—and cell factories. Last year Cradle—backed by Index Ventures and Kindred Capital—raised a total of $33M. In February 2024, Cradle partnered with Ginkgo and became part of the Ginkgo Technology Network. And in March 2024, they presented a Case study: design better P450s 4X faster by combining AI-generated mutations with human expertise. Their engineering goal was to increase the activity of a key P450 enzyme.
💠 Eleven Therapeutics founded in 2020 in Israel is harnessing the power of synthetic chemistry and AI to reimagine mRNA therapeutics. By utilizing massively parallel combinatorial chemistry and AI algorithms to unleash the full power of RNA, they are mapping the universe of RNA chemistry and reveal the structure-activity relationship of RNA molecules. In 2023, Eleven Therapeutics and Novo Nordisk announced a research partnership to identify novel nucleic acid molecules to treat cardiometabolic diseases by leveraging Eleven’s DELiveri platform. So far Eleven raised a total of $26M in seed funding. Shift Bioscience (UK) is unlocking safe rejuvenation with cell simulation models ($5.65M). Lab Genius.
✴️ Blue Yard
BlueYard is a venture capital investment firm based in Berlin, Germany founded in 2016 (by Berlin-based Dubliner Ciaran O’Leary, son of former IDA boss Barry O’Leary) that invests in founders (seed-stage, early-stage, and later-stage companies) with transforming ideas that decentralize markets and empower humanity. They invest into:
💠 Chemify spun out of 15 years of research at the University of Glasgow UK is a company that aims to digitize chemistry and produce solutions to run chemical code for drug discovery, chemical synthesis and materials discovery (A universal system for digitization and automatic execution of the chemical synthesis literature). On August 02, 2023, Chemify announced a funding of $43M including a Series A led by Triatomic Capital, joined by new investors including Hong-Kong based Horizon Ventures, US-based Rocketship Ventures, Possible Ventures, Alix Ventures, Scotland-based Eos, and the UK Government Innovation Accelerators program. Existing investor BlueYard Capital also participated in the round. On 13 September 2023, Dewpoint Therapeutics announced a collaboration with Chemify to expedite the discovery of molecules that target cancer and neurodegeneration. On January 18, 2024, Chemify and Prepaire™ Labs announced to expand their partnership with an additional program to tackle the ongoing Opioid crisis, by directly combining Chemify’s breakthrough programmable chemistry platform with Prepaire’s integrated novel open collaboration drug discovery platform.
💠 Sensible Biotechnologies (Slovakia, UK) is engineering cells to unlock the next generation of mRNA medicines. On April 10, 2023, Sensible and Ginkgo inked a deal to develop an mRNA platform. Sensible raised $4.2M. Bit bio (UK) is using a Cell identity coding platform that has the ability to create any human cell type and to manufacture it at scale with precision and consistency. In 2023, BlueRock Therapeutics LP, a clinical stage cell therapy company and wholly owned independently operated subsidiary of Bayer AG, and Bit Bio announced a collaboration and option agreement for the discovery and manufacture of iPSC-derived regulatory T cells (Tregs) for use in creating therapeutics. Bit bio raised a total of $145M. Biomia (Denmark) develops plant-inspired medicines to address the unmet medical needs in pain, mental health disorders and addiction.
✴️ BACKED VC
BACKED is the human-centric venture capital fund investing in exceptional founders, at Seed and Series A, in Europe (€500K - €2.5M). At the heart of all this is their Seed to Series A Founder Development Platform, a proprietary bank of masterclasses, tools and service providers for all BACKED founders. So far, through their extensive founder support platform and active portfolio community they've helped 110+ entrepreneurs to successfully scale 60+ companies across Europe. They invest into:
💠 Ochre Bio (UK) is a deep phenotyping company developing RNA therapies for chronic liver disease (total raised $39.8M). On April 22, 2024, Boehringer Ingelheim struck a deal with Ochre Bio, to collaborate on treatments for liver diseases such as late-stage metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis cirrhosis. Molecule AG (Germany) is a software platform to accelerate innovation in the pharmaceutical industry. It connects scientists, patients and industry to advance drug development in a collaborative open market ($12.7M).
💠 Lab Genius founded in 2012 by James Field and headquartered in London, UK is the first biopharmaceutical company developing next generation protein therapeutics using ML, synthetic biology and robotics. They have pioneered the development of a smart robotic platform, EVA™, that’s capable of designing, conducting and critically learning from its own experiments. In 2023, LabGenius announced that its multi-year research collaboration with Sanofi had positive results in the therapeutic development of NANOBODY® heavy chain variable domains. In particular, LabGenius confirmed that the 10 most improved NANOBODY® variants demonstrated up to a 7-fold improvement in the desired property of interest, whilst maintaining the potency of the starting molecule.
On May 15, 2023, LabGenius presented data from LabGenius’ T-cell engager (TCE) lead optimization platform that delivers highly potent and efficacious single-domain antibodies with best-in-class killing selectivity. Optimizing antibody therapeutics across multiple properties is challenging, especially for TCEs. Hopefully, LabGenius’ ML-driven platform can be used for the simultaneous optimisation of potency, efficacy, tumor cell selectivity and developability.
In this demonstration study, LabGenius’ platform was used to co-optimize VHH-based HER2xCD3 TCEs, which resulted in the delivery of novel highly selective, high-performing molecules with non-intuitive design features. The top performing molecules demonstrated ≥10,000-fold killing selectivity, corresponding to a >400-fold improvement over a relevant clinical benchmark, Runimotamab (a TCE currently in phase I clinical trials). LabGenius is leveraging this target and format-agnostic platform technology across both partnered programs and a pipeline of wholly-owned TCEs.
In May 2024, LabGenius raised £35M for AI-powered drug discovery (for a total of €67.8M).