I: Latest on TechBio 🔵💙
I: Latest on TechBio 🔵💙
Revolutionizing Drug Development
"We are all connected. To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically."
News ☄️
💠 Belfast-based AMPLY Discovery raises €1.6 million to tackle complex diseases with drug discovery platform
🔵 DeepCure Closes $24M Funding Round Led by IAG Capital Partners
🔷 Fujitsu taps generative AI to help speed drug development
🌀 Cambridge-based Qureight raises €8 million Series A to accelerate drug development in lung and heart disease
💠 How Boltzmann Is Using GenAI To Speed Up Drug Discovery In India
🔵 Molecule AI to showcase revolutionary Molecule GEN Drug Discovery Platform at Startup Mahakumbh
Illumina Ventures 🪄🧙♂️
Illumina Ventures is an independently managed firm focused on early-stage companies that are pioneering new applications of genomics enabling precision medicine, and with a strategic relationship with Illumina (NASDAQ: ILMN). Since 2016, Illumina Ventures has invested in over 30 start-ups in the US and Europe, making it one of the leading investors in life science tools, clinical diagnostics and genomics-enabled therapeutic platforms. While Illumina is an anchor limited partner in the fund, the majority of the $560M raised by the independently managed firm comes from other limited partners.
On June 20, 2023, Illumina Ventures launched Illumina® Ventures Labs that will operate and provide access to fully equipped genomics labs in the US and the UK, providing mentorship and seed financing to attract a broad range of genomics related start-ups. Illumina will provide the start-ups with technical guidance from its subject matter experts and will provide Illumina Ventures Labs access to its next-generation sequencing (NGS) platforms, in lieu of operating its Accelerator program. Illumina Ventures invests into:
Tagomics is harnessing the power of multiomics to accelerate disease understanding and diagnosis. They use advanced bioinformatic workflows and ML approaches to analyze distinct multiomic patterns that drive patient specific insights and diagnosis (Epigenetic Markers, Genomic Markers and Fragmentomic Markers).
Iambic.AI (Iambic Therapeutics formerly known as Entos) is developing physics-based AI algorithms to drive a high-throughput experimental platform, converting new molecular designs to new biological insights each week with: NeuralPLexer a protein-ligand structure prediction 3D physics-based equivariant generative diffusion tool, OrbNet an AI-accelerated quantum chemistry Graph neural network architecture based on quantum features, PropANE a multi-endpoint property prediction tool and Magnet offering generative molecular design.
On March 27, 2024, Iambic Therapeutics Announced the First Patient Dosed in Phase 1 Clinical Study of IAM1363, a Highly Selective HER2 Inhibitor for the Treatment of Solid Tumors.
On March 18, 2024, Iambic said that its Rapid Path to the Clinic Enabled by Its AI-Driven Drug Discovery Platform, was Built in Collaboration with NVIDIA.
Ribometrix is leveraging proprietary RNA structure determination, state-of-the-art RNA tools and technologies, and complementary AI/ML capabilities to directly target and modulate RNA biology. Among their partners you can find Genentech and Vertex.
On April 07, 2024, Ribometrix shared the First c-MYC Data Validating RNA-Targeting Platform and Demonstrated Synergistic Potential of eIF4E Program at AACR 2024 for
Identifying a small molecules targeting c-MYC (a validated but historically undruggable cancer driver),
Demonstrating direct binding of small molecules to c-MYC RNA and reduction of associated protein levels (longtime goal of RNA therapeutic development) and
Demonstrating in vivo tumor regression in combination with in vitro data supported efficacy in drug-resistant tumors with the RNA-binding protein inhibitor program targeting eIF4E.
Sherlock Biosciences is trying to change how people access diagnostics. The company is developing a suite of sophisticated home tests that provides instant and accurate results by leveraging three advanced technologies: CRISPR, synthetic biology and AI.
Clarapath 🤖
Clarapath is a medical robotics company automating the laboratory. Their first product is focused on automating the microtomy station in pathology with SectionStar. Whether you’re looking to improve slide quality, decrease turnaround time or reduce cost, SectionStar’s automated sectioning will help modernize your lab. In particular,
On April 23, 2024, Clarapath Formed a Strategic Collaboration with Mayo Clinic to Advance Pathology Tissue Processing with Clarapath’s SectionStar™, that combines robotics, computational AI and integrated histopathology workflows, resulting in standardized slide outputs and quantitative quality metrics. This can significantly accelerate sample processing and reduce human involvement and errors.
On Mar 15, 2023, Clarapath Acquired Crosscope, Bridging Histology Automation with Digital Pathology. Crosscope is a medical AI software company that develops AI-powered telepathology for medical image information extraction and precision medicine diagnostics. Crosscope is leveraging ML and intelligent software to build solutions that go beyond the limits of the human mind (Imaging AI).
Vice President of Laboratory Platforms at Clarapath is Jayendra Shinde, PhD Founder and CEO at Crosscope.
Clarapath has raised a total of $39.2M in funding over 4 rounds. Founder and Chief Scientific Fellow is Partha Mitra an American neuroscientist and computer scientist.
Syntro AI 🗨️
Syntro AI is a new AI-powered conversational platform that streamlines the scientific research workflow, saving time and increasing efficiency. At Syntro, they specialize in utilizing LLMs to enhance lab workflows.
Syntro is a platform that aggregates information from various sources (including a Laboratory Information Management System, LIMS and Electronic Laboratory Notebook, ELN) and creates and manages repositories and enables AI-based features. With Syntro there's no need to alter your workflow or learn new tools to input your data. Syntro automatically monitors any existing services you choose to integrate with your repository. So you can:
Consolidate all your research data in one location. Establish a repository for your project, integrate it with your existing services, and enjoy a comprehensive overview of your work at a glance.
Interact with AI for insights about your project. Pose questions in natural language and receive AI-generated responses.
Share files with your team and collaborators easily and securely.
Co-founders of Syntro are Agata Staszak and Wojtek Śmigiel and they just launched a pilot study with Genomtec, which is a MedTech company specializing in the development of advanced technologies in the field of genetic diagnostics. The company's flagship project is the Genomtec ID mobile diagnostic system, which allows for fast and precise molecular analysis outside the laboratory environment without the need to involve qualified laboratory personnel. The company has EU CE-IVD certification for the Genomtec ID RP5-PLEX diagnostic panel, which simultaneously detects the presence of the most common respiratory tract infections.
Voyant Bio 🧵📐
At Voyant Bio they are on a mission to revolutionize drug discovery with an AI-native data analytics platform. Their platform aims to build best-in-class data analysis workflows to answer complex biological questions by talking to scientists. The founder, Assaf Magen, PhD, has extensive first-hand experience in life sciences (immuno-oncology) and cutting-edge computational biology data science applications.
In 2023, Voyant Bio (formerly Ask Mendel AI) made it as a finalist at the SDxAI Hackathon Finalist by empowering biologists with computational skills to visualize and analyze high-dimensional genomics data through a user-friendly, no-code interface.
Right now they are seeking an exceptional CTO/founding engineer to lead their technical efforts. This is a hands-on full-stack software engineering position which requires in-depth knowledge of modern AI/ML tools.
And they are also searching for venture funding, to accelerate their development and target smaller biotechs, adopting a vertical SaaS business model with licensing and usage-based fees.
Parallel Bio 🧫
Parallel Bio is using immune organoids and AI to design drugs. Founded by Robert M. DiFazio and Juliana L. Hilliard (in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic) Parallel Bio started with developing an immune organoid to fill a significant gap in disease modeling.
Organoids are small, 3D mini models of human organs (about the size of a pencil eraser) that are the world’s most accurate models of disease, and have recently emerged as a powerful technology for drug discovery. Incredible advances in bioengineering and ML are now allowing scientists to grow organoids at a huge scale and to analyze the hundreds of cells and thousands of molecules that comprise the immune system in a way that humans simply cannot.
Parallel’s platform combines best-in-class human immune organoids with scale and computational methods to generate unprecedented insights into human health and disease. Not only can they rapidly discover new drugs that they know will work in patients from the start, but they know how well a drug performs across an entire population, something not currently possible with existing technology.
On May 17, 2024, Parallel Bio launched the Clinical Trial in a Dish to predict drug efficacy. The ‘Clinical Trial in a Dish’ to enhance early-stage drug discovery is an innovative approach utilizing human immune organoids and robotics to simulate the biological diversity of a population, potentially offering more accurate predictions of a drug’s safety and efficacy. So far, five pharmaceutical companies have already tested 20 drug candidates, signaling a shift away from traditional animal testing.
Parallel Bio has raised a total of $4.6M in funding over two rounds.
Edinburgh Innovations 🧑🏭
Wellcome iTPA (a Wellcome Trust funded accelerator embedded at the University of Edinburgh), is part of Edinburgh Innovations supporting early career researchers to commercialize. The team of six (Jeff Wright, Andrew McBride, Max Reiter, Lysimachos Zografos, Amelia Hodgson, Joe Murphy), led by Dr Lysimachos Zografos, has built a community of over 1300 researchers and supported 180 innovative health and wellbeing projects so far.
Among their 2024 finalists in Scotland’s Life Sciences Awards, you can find the immuno-oncology spinout Macomics Ltd, founded in 2018 by two University of Edinburgh academics: Professor Jeffrey Pollard, former Director of the MRC Centre for Reproductive Health (who sadly died of cancer in May 2023) and immunologist Dr Luca Cassetta. Macomics is developing novel therapeutics to modulate the activity of macrophages, in order to increase the body’s immune defense against tumors in cancer sufferers. Macomics is using ENIGMAC™, a discovery platform representing a unique tool for gene-to-function studies that incorporates novel assay systems and unique genome editing methods, supported by multi-omics bioinformatics analyses.
In particular, they use a human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell (iPSC) line that yields macrophages phenotypically and functionally very similar to HUMAN monocyte-derived macrophages. By employing the iPSC system they produce millions of macrophages per week that are subsequently used for multiple high throughput assays to support target validation and drug discovery. Moreover, they developed a suite of technologies to allow fast and reliable gene editing of macrophages (gene Knock In/KI, Knock Out/KO and Knock Down/KD with high efficiency both at iPSC and macrophage level while maintaining expression/silencing during macrophage differentiation) and KD can be performed using a pooled approach that enables screening by flow cytometry-based phenotypes at large scale.
On 11 April 2024, Macomics unveiled details of its lead programme, a first-in-class ligand independent-pan-LILRB monoclonal antibody for the treatment of cancer, MACO355, capable of mediating macrophage reprogramming under immunosuppressive conditions.
On May 12, 2024, Macomics and IFOM, the AIRC Institute of Molecular Oncology (one of Italy’s leading research institutes in Cancer Research) announced a macrophage Scientific collaboration.
Macomics has R&D and office facilities in Edinburgh and Cambridge, UK and is financed by Epidarex Capital (a transatlantic venture firm that invests in early-stage, high-growth life science companies in under-ventured markets) and backed by Scottish Enterprise, LifeLink Ventures and Caribou Property Limited.
Inside the University of Edinburgh you can also find the AI Accelerator, a flagship initiative targeting AI-focused entrepreneurs and businesses worldwide, with the aim of scaling up their operations. The AI Accelerator is a comprehensive, six-month programme dedicated to enhancing data-driven scaleups with business skills development, connections to partnerships and access to an incredible network of trainers, mentors and investors. For example, they supported (among many others) BioLiberty, iLoF and Microplate Dx:
BioLiberty is offering a robotic glove which strengthens grip. When the user attempts to grip an object, the glove senses the user’s intent and responds by creating a force to assist the user’s hand. The glove is accompanied by a Digital Therapy Platform, which provides the user with tailored exercises to help develop natural hand strength. For sufferers of hand weakness this glove helps carry out day to day tasks.
iLoF is using a patented platform technology, based on AI and photonics, to build a digital library of nano-scale diseases biomarkers and biological profiles. They collect "fingerprints" from nano-scale structures in blood and provide personalized, screening and stratification tools in an affordable, fast and portable way.
Microplate Dx offers a true solution for rapid antibiotic susceptibility testing. They combine ground-breaking hardware with novel data processing algorithms to perform rapid antibiotic susceptibility testing for urinary tract infections.
Among the game-changing AI Accelerator alumni is also Gigged.AI, a cutting-edge talent platform that connects high-growth startups and enterprises with on-demand tech talent.
Seven Bridges 🌁
Boston, MA-based Seven Bridges is the leading biomedical data company, specializing in software and data analytics to drive public and private healthcare research. They offer end-to-end bioinformatic solutions—including access to datasets, analytic workflows and algorithms, cloud-computing infrastructure and scientific support—that speed the path from raw experimental data (from genomics to clinical) to new treatments and diagnostics. The Seven Bridges ecosystem consists of a scalable, secure multi-cloud analytic platform, petabytes of connected biomedical data and expert on-demand professional services.
In 2023, Velsera a novel company was formed with the initial acquisition of three global, industry-leading companies in the healthcare and life science industries: Pierian, Seven Bridges and UgenTec. The Velsera suite, this novel precision engine company connecting healthcare and life sciences, includes:
Cancer Genomics Cloud (CGC). CGC, powered by Velsera and funded by the NCI, is a flexible cloud platform that enables analysis, storage and computation of large cancer datasets. With the CGC, any user with an account can easily access petabytes of cancer data, share it, analyze it and use the computational power of the cloud without having to learn how to program and get familiar with several different data portals.
BioData Catalyst Powered by Seven Bridges (BDC-Seven Bridges). BDC serves as a cloud-based platform of tools, applications, and workflows to help NHLBI research investigators securely find, access, share and analyze genomics data at scale. And
CAVATICA is a storage, sharing, and analysis platform designed to handle large volumes of pediatric tumor genomics data.
Velsera is also collaborating with NVIDIA to bring the NVIDIA Parabricks software suite to its Seven Bridges Platform. This collaboration will enable researchers to leverage GPU-accelerated tools for optimizing secondary analysis of sequencing data, empowering them to accelerate drug discovery and improve patient outcomes.
Finally in 2024 Velsera joined forces with Flywheel (the leading medical imaging management and AI development platform) and the Center for Data-Driven Discovery in Biomedicine (D3b) based at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, to advance the analysis of large-scale genomics and medical imaging datasets. In this collaborative pilot effort, the partners combined their expertise to unite the Velsera CAVATICA platform and the Flywheel Core Platform, providing unprecedented capabilities to scale multimodal data analysis with clear pathways to advance precision medicine programs across government and pharmaceutical sectors.
Turbine 💿
Turbine’s in silico experiments can test an almost infinite number of interventions on a simulated cell that accurately reflects the molecular diversity of cancer cells. More precisely, Turbine’s core technology, the Simulated Cell™ platform, utilizes ML to understand how human cells make decisions, by mapping and modeling how thousands of signaling proteins interact and by characterizing cellular level cancer behavior and response or resistance to treatment. In other words, Turbine takes laboratory trial and error out of drug discovery and tackles it with scalable power on their servers, all by leveraging AI in an evolving, predictive platform to understand cancer mechanisms and unlock novel therapies with Simulated Cells.
On May 16, 2024, Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has made a strategic investment, through Accenture Ventures, in Turbine to further extend its capabilities to global biopharma companies that can benefit from Turbine’s ability to uncover hidden biological insights, with the potential to guide and accelerate key drug development workstreams (Accenture Invests in Turbine to Accelerate Use of AI-Powered Cell Simulations for Biopharma Research and Development).
Established in 2016 by Dániel Veres, Kristóf Zsolt Szalay, and Szabolcs Nagy Turbine has partnerships with several firms, including Harmonic Discovery, Bayer, AstraZeneca, Ginkgo Bioworks and Ono (pipeline). The London based Budapest University spinout Turbine AI raised a total $36.79M.
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