News and trends on TechBio
News and trends on TechBio
A newsletter about Science, Technology and AI Drug Discovery
Some random news and trends on TechBio
⚙️ Undeterred Capital founded in 2020 in Los Angeles, California is a venture capital firm that targets companies in under-invested areas across health, biological platforms and applied robotics. Founded and managed by Joe Wilson—previously co-founder and COO at Multiply Labs, a Y Combinator-backed pharmaceutical robotics company that launched the first 3D printed pill in the market—Undeterred invests (with 8-10 investments per year) in deep tech and bioscience companies at pre-seed or seed stage, such as:
Biological Platforms
Parallel Bio (Massachusetts US, 2021) is accelerating the development of curative immunotherapies via an AI-powered organoid screening. Its platform replicates the human immune system in a dish across populations to discover cures at a pace never seen before, using organoids that is 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. Then robotics and ML allows them to analyze the hundreds of cells and thousands of molecules that comprise the immune system in a way that humans simply cannot.
On January 19, 2023, Parallel Bio, announced the expansion of its scientific leadership and advisory from GSK, MIT and Stanford.
Lavo Life Sciences (California US, 2022) is a VC-backed, early-stage startup offering AI-accelerated chemistry simulations for rapid drug development. They use AI-accelerated quantum chemistry to robustly understand molecular crystal polymorphism with Force Field Optimization, Polymorph Ranking (their AI-accelerated crystal lattice energies are as accurate as DFT and 100x faster), Cloud Computing and Thermodynamics.
Applied Robotics
CheMastery (London UK, 2019) is standardizing and automating how research and manufacture are carried out in chemical laboratories via robotics and chemistry language processing. CheMastery has recently closed a multi-million investment round (7percent ventures) and is founded by Anna Andreou—a chemical methodologist that has received her PhD in Chemistry from the University of Cambridge—and Stefan Glatzel—with a lot of experience in building software and hardware technologies, including 6 years of leading mechanical engineering experience and PhD in Material Science from a Max Planck Institute.
Health Technology
AOA (Colorado US, 2020) is offering liquid biopsies for early detection of ovarian cancer, with GlycoLocate™, an AI enabled early detection cancer test through the utilization of tumor marker gangliosides, the next class of biomarkers in early cancer detection. In particular, AOA Dx is developing the first and only technology utilizing these markers with data science, providing remarkable insights into early cancer detection. They also have AKRIVIS GD™, a novel blood test harnessing the power of tumor marker gangliosides to detect early-stage ovarian cancer.
In October 12, 2023, AOA Dx announced an oversubscribed $17M round (for a total of $24M) led by Good Growth Capital with participation from leading investors including RH Capital, Y Combinator, Astia Fund, Adaptive Capital Partners, Gore Range Capital, LongeVC, The Helm, VU Venture Partners and FemHealth Ventures, along with strategic diagnostic investors, including Labcorp Venture Fund. Several funds invested for the second time, underpinning the continuous success of AOA Dx across the last year.
⚙️ Big Bets is a venture capital and private equity company in Brazil that invests exclusively in software-intensive companies, and founder and partner is Alexandre Mello. The investments of Big Bets are highly agnostic, covering areas like financial services (Conta Simples, Ume and Justos), identity (Unico), pharmaceutical industry (Menten AI and Pepper Bio), diagnostics (Huna), media (Festalab, Prota, and Newtail), primary education (Studdy), energy distribution (Lemon), devtools (Lazy AI, DataMilk, NuMind, Croct), among others. Regarding TechBio, Big Bets has invested so far in:
Pepper Bio (Boston US, 2018) is a TechBio company that wants to reduce costs by getting drug developers to the right targets faster, using what it calls a “transomics” approach, which maps data across all the -omics layers and translates information in a way similar to Google maps that integrates various layers of data. Accordingly, Pepper’s COMPASS platform decodes layers of biological maps—genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and phosphoproteomics—providing the fastest route for drug discovery.
Just a month ago, they announced an oversubscribed $6.5M seed round led by NFX with participation from Silverton Partners, Merck Digital Sciences Studio, Mana Ventures, Tensility Ventures, VSC Ventures, and more.
Menten AI (California US, 2018) is building the world's most advanced generative AI platform for peptide therapeutics. The Menten AI platform designs peptide macrocycles in a larger chemical space (1050 compared to 109 for high throughput platforms) and in record time (8 weeks vs 1-2 years in industry). This equates to 10,000x greater sampling power in ⅙ the time with >50% in vitro hit success compared to ~9% in industry. Menten AI’s platform has been validated across the preclinical discovery pipeline from in silico, to in vitro and in vivo efficacy with several peptides having already shown drug-like DMPK properties and in vivo efficacy. Backed by top-tier VCs including Uncork Capital, Khosla Ventures, Social Impact Capital and Y-Combinator, Menten AI has raised a total of $4M and has partnerships with D-Wave supercomputer, IBM-Q and a collaboration with Xanadu.
⚙️ Thrive Capital is an investment firm in New York that builds and invests in internet, software and technology-enabled companies. The firm was founded by Joshua Kushner who is also co-founder of Oscar Health and minority owner of the Memphis Grizzlies. Some of its notable investments include Open AI, Instagram, Spotify, Slack, Patreon, Twitch and many more. Thrive Capital has invested in the following TechBio companies:
Benchling (California US, 2012) is a cloud R&D developer for early drug development efforts as well as programs tailored for RNA-based therapeutics. The company is focusing on life science collaboration, both private and public, through creating cloud-based software tools for using cutting-edge techniques like CRISPR, CAR-T immunotherapy and genetic engineering, for designing and running experiments, for analyzing data and for sharing research. Benchling software includes also an electronic lab notebook that allows researchers to document their experiments.
In May 27, 2020, Benchling announced a $50M Series D investment, led by Alkeon Capital with participation from new investors Spark Capital, Lux Capital, and ICONIQ Partners, as well as existing investors Thrive Capital, Menlo Ventures and Benchmark.
In July 2021, Thrive Capital led a $20M investment in the Brazilian healthcare startup Pipo Saude that sells and manages healthcare benefits for Brazilian companies. Pipo Saude was founded in July 2019 with the goal of buying and managing healthcare benefits for corporations in combination with providing a care navigation platform for employees.
On March 30, 2023, Florence, an innovator in healthcare enablement software, launched out of stealth mode after raising $20M in seed funding. The health tech startup's round was led by Thrive Capital, GV (Google Ventures), and Salesforce Ventures with participation from Vast Ventures, BoxGroup and Atento Capital. Florence maximizes clinical capacity, reduces administrative burden, expands access and increases patient satisfaction while driving clinical efficiency, giving clinical staff more time to care for patients and driving patient satisfaction.
⚙️ Congruence Therapeutics—a biotechnology company in Montreal, Canada harnessing the power of protein dynamics, biophysics, ML and computational chemistry to design novel small molecules for diseases of protein misfolding—announced this year the close of an extension to its Series A financing, bringing the total amount raised to over $65M, and led by new investor BDC Capital's Thrive Venture Fund, with participation from current investors Amplitude Ventures, Fonds de solidarité FTQ, OrbiMed, Investissement Quebec (IQ), SilverArc and others.
Congruence Therapeutics has created a purpose-built computational drug discovery engine called Revenir™, which captures the biophysical changes caused by mutations in proteins. By examining surface features and numerous biophysical descriptors of both the mutated and wild-type proteins, they build an understanding of that defect and how to correct it.
Michelle Scarborough—the Managing Partner of the Thrive Venture Fund and Women in Technology Venture Fund at BDC Capital, leading the world's two largest venture funds dedicated to supporting and investing in women-led technology businesses—is recognized as an influential leader in venture capital in Canada and added regarding Congruence:
"With an incredible team led by Clarissa (Dr. Clarissa Desjardins, CEO of Congruence) and a first-of-its-kind discovery platform, Congruence will quickly emerge as a leading biotechnology company who is well-positioned to disrupt traditional drug discovery and deliver real benefits to patients. We are proud to lead this investment round and look forward to supporting Congruence through its next phase of growth."
Here are the five biotech companies in Montreal to keep an eye on (Congruence Therapeutics, Giiant Pharma, Inversago Pharma, Modulari-T Biosciences and Nomic).
⚙️ Persistent Systems is a trusted Digital Engineering and Enterprise Modernization partner in India for global market leaders across many industries. In particular, the Persistent Life Sciences division helps analytical instruments, medical devices and pharmaceutical companies to better utilize technology to bring new products and solutions to market, by building the software that delivers the connected digital lab of the future and by enabling pharmaceutical companies to execute decentralized trials efficiently. They offer:
Decentralized Trials
Quality Management & Compliance
Multiplatform Analytics & Integration, and
Genomics
Their extensive industry experience includes supporting 3 of the 5 largest contract research organizations (CROs) and 6 of top 10 device manufacturers.
⚙️ Nucleate —the largest global community of bio-innovators—just introduced a pilot initiative, the AI in Biotech project, at the cutting edge of innovation, targeted especially for Nucleate’s global Activator program—a six-month, equity-free cohort program designed for academic biotech founders. This multi-component AI in Biotech series, in collaboration with Bits in Bio, is designed to empower startups and academics by harnessing the power of AI in critical areas such as Protein Design, Drug Discovery, CRO and Automation and Data Management and Regulation. Through the upcoming months, they will offer virtual and in-person educational and social events across Nucleate chapters in North America and Europe.
What to expect:
Experts will guide you through the intricacies of applying AI in the biotech landscape, through a series of live panels,
Mentorship with experienced professionals who understand the complexities and successes of this rapidly evolving domain,
Engage in the vibrancy of in-person networking across global AI hotspots, where the community comes alive, fostering collaboration and sparking new ideas, and
Gear up for success with digital toolkits, accessing curated resources and on-demand workshops to stay ahead of the latest AI in Biotech trends.
📢 AI in Protein Design - January Expert Panel:
So, circle January 11, 2024, 12pm EST on your calendar for the first enriching discussion of the AI in Biotech series with distinguished guests:
Adam Moyer co-Founder at Vilya, a cutting-edge computational biotechnology company, co-founded by a team of scientists from the Institute of Protein Design (IPD) led by David Baker, PhD and by ARCH Venture Partners. Their platform is built on ground-breaking research in advanced computational approaches and taps into uncharted chemical space within cyclic peptides to design new molecular structures not found in nature.
Vilya was launched in 2022 with $50M in committed Series A financing led by ARCH Venture Partners (ARCH’s portfolio for great science) and an accomplished team of scientific team members and advisors that span data science, synthetic chemistry, drug development and company building.
Alexander Tong is the CTO and Co-Founder of Dreamfold in Canada (2021), a company applying 3D generative algorithms to design medicines to accomplish objectives that were previously impossible (Precision medicine). For this reason, they developed FoldFlow, a series of novel generative models specifically equipped to reason about 3D structural space by designing and testing medicines in biological experiments. FoldFlow is a family of algorithms (FoldFlow-Base, FoldFlow-OT and FoldFlow-SFM) and is more stable and faster to train compared to diffusion-based models.
Yoshua Bengio, Scientific Director, Mila & IVADO, Full Professor, Samsung AI Professor, Université de Montréal, Canada CIFAR AI Chair.
Paul Kim, PhD student at Baker Lab (that develops protein design software), at the Institute for Protein Design, University of Washington. And
Manvitha Ponnapati, PhD student at MIT Media Lab (a research laboratory whose research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from technology, media, science, art and design).
Register here.
⚙️ Digitalis Commons (New York, San Francisco, Boston) is a non-profit organization that builds frontier-advancing, scalable solutions that have an outsized impact on important problems in health and health care. They partner with technical innovators, entrepreneurs, investors, philanthropic groups and funding agencies to tackle technical and commercial barriers to creating and implementing these solutions. Their foundational partnership is with the US Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). Equipped with $2.5 billion in federal dollars, ARPA-H is funding the research and development of new ways to tackle the hardest problems in health, including cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease.
In July 25, 2023, Digitalis Commons—that is the non-profit affiliate of Digitalis Ventures—entered into a Partnership Intermediary Agreement to provide commercialization services to the ARPA-H Project Accelerator Transition Office (PATIO). This first-of-its-kind agreement aims to speed up and smooth the process of getting breakthrough innovations in health to the American public. Digitalis Ventures invests in
Life Sciences,
Ascend
Base5 Genomics
Biomilq
Bonum Therapeutics
Code Ocean
Eden Brew
Elegen
Elemental Machines
Terray Therapeutics and many more.
Health technology and Services,
Onc.AI
Somatix
Reema Health
Nu Perfect and many more. And
Animal Health
Companion
Napo
Made by Nacho and many more.
For example, Code Ocean (New York, 2016, raised $37M) provides one trusted place for life science researchers to share research data and computational assets, to collaborate more quickly and to communicate more effectively. Code Ocean, is an integrated and first of its kind library and workbench that preserves a record of all coding, data and software used in computational research, and guarantees reproducibility by maintaining complete visibility of the research lineage.
Simon Adar is the co-founder and CEO of Code Ocean, a researcher turned entrepreneur who founded Code Ocean as part of his postdoc at Cornell-Tech, Cornell University. His background is in signal and image processing, hyperspectral imaging, and spectroscopy. On November 15, 2023, Code Ocean announced its ongoing partnership with the Allen Institute. Less than a year into their partnership, the Allen Institute has achieved a 4x increase in workflow efficiency, in addition to recognizing many other benefits of increased reproducibility, interoperability and collaboration.
Until next time,
And I hope you all have a wonderful holiday time! 🌟
Thank you for everything this past year 🌻—looking forward to seeing you in 2024.
A special thanks 🙏😊 to Michael Spencer from AISupremacy and
from Artificial Intelligence Made Simple, that are both helping here on Substack.Wishing you a happy New Year!
Bye bye from my small island Corfu, in Greece 🦑🦞🐙🐠🌊🐚
