TechBio News 🕹️

TechBio Investment News 🏦

OutSee closed a 💷2️⃣.5️⃣M seed round

Cambridge-based firm OutSee just closed a £2.5M seed round and signed ✒️ a 🆕 partnership 🤝 (AI-driven genomics biotech inks new partnership after closing £2.5m seed round).

• ✅ OutSee which applies AI predictive genomics to drug target discovery will use the seed money to experimentally validate drug targets discovered using Nomaly, a genomics-driven computational method for simultaneously predicting phenotypes along with their possible underlying biological mechanisms.

• ✅ The round for OutSee was led by Ahren Innovation Capital, with Kadmos Capital, Panacea, Empirical Ventures, and 26 independent angel investors also participating.

• ✅ Moreover, OutSee has signed a strategic agreement with o2h discovery, a preclinical contract research organization with an integrated drug discovery platform. The partnership aims to launch 🛸 a collaborative drug discovery programme for OutSee’s lead target candidate.

Converge Bio Secured 💲2️⃣5️⃣M

Converge Bio, a dynamic startup with offices in Boston and Tel Aviv, has successfully raised $25M in an oversubscribed Series A funding round (Converge Bio Secures $25 Million to Revolutionize Drug Development with Generative AI).

• ✅ Led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from TLV Partners, Vintage Investment Partners, Saras Capital, and executives from OpenAI, Meta, and Wiz, this round brings their total funding to $30M.

• ✅ This investment follows Converge’s rapid commercial growth and continued breakthroughs at the scientific frontier of AI-driven molecular modeling.

• ✅ To date, Converge Bio has deployed platforms for target discovery, antibody design, protein manufacturing optimization, and biomarker discovery across its customer base.

Proxima raised 💲8️⃣0️⃣M in seed funding

Proxima (formerly VantAI) has raised $80M led by DCVC with participation from NVIDIA, Braidwell, Roivant, AIX Ventures, Yosemite, Magnetic Ventures, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc., Modi Ventures, and others.

• ✅ As part of the financing, the company has rebranded from VantAI to Proxima to reflect its singular focus on building out both the technology and data layer needed to unlock proximity-based therapeutics.

• ✅ These next generation medicines work by controlling how proteins interact with one another, rather than simply inhibiting or activating a single target, and represent a superset that includes modalities such as molecular glues and PROTACs that have the potential to unlock historically undruggable disease targets.

Aurora Therapeutics launched 🛸 with 💲1️⃣6️⃣M

Aurora Therapeutics, pairing recent advances in gene editing and AI, just announced its official launch to transform personalized gene editing from a one-patient breakthrough into a scalable model capable of bringing therapies to millions of patients with rare diseases (Aurora Therapeutics Launches to Realize Potential of Personalized Gene Editing for Millions of Patients with Rare Diseases).

• ✅ The company launches with a $16M seed financing from Menlo Ventures to create the first platform for treating rare genetic mutations that have historically been impossible to address at scale.

• ✅ Aurora combines state-of-the-art CRISPR engineering with umbrella regulatory pathways and modular CMC frameworks that allow many mutation-specific therapies to move forward in parallel. Aurora’s approach addresses the fundamental economic and operational barriers that have historically prevented treatments for rare mutations, enabling CRISPR therapies to reach patients at population scale.

💲5️⃣0️⃣M funding round for biotech company bit.bio

bit.bio, an award-winning human synthetic biology company, has secured $50M in Series C funding, led by M&G Investments to scale human cell programming technology as a foundation for the next generation of drug discovery (M&G champions UK innovation in drug discovery by leading US$50 million funding round for biotech company bit.bio).

• ✅ The funding accelerates development of the ioCells platform across discovery and toxicology, supports the creation of high-fidelity datasets for AI-enabled research, and advances a shift toward more predictive, human-relevant pre-clinical models with reduced reliance on animal testing.

• ✅ Its ioCells research products provide scientists access to highly characterized, consistent, scalable human cells that enable research and drug discovery teams to accelerate their experimental timelines and reduce experimental variability, providing an important alternative to traditional workflows. They are also leveraging their platform to build a pipeline of txCells for cell therapies.

• ✅ Alongside the funding, Lord David Prior joins bit.bio as independent director and Board Chair. Lord Prior brings more than two decades of leadership across UK life sciences and health policy, including senior roles spanning healthcare delivery, regulation, and industrial strategy. His experience will support bit.bio's next phase of growth as the company scales globally and progresses toward public markets.

Nuclera raised an additional 💲1️⃣2️⃣M in their Series C funding round

Nuclera raised an additional $12M in their Series C funding round. Cambridge biotech Nuclera has boosted its Series C round to $87M after securing a further $12M from a range of backers. The company, which also has facilities in Boston in the US, is working to accelerate drug discovery by providing rapid, easy access to functional proteins through its benchtop eProtein Discovery™ System.

• ✅ The fresh raise was led by Elevage Medical Technologies, principally based in Texas and whose parent company is Patient Square Capital, and serial Cambridge entrepreneur Dr Jonathan Milner. They were joined by existing investors British Business Bank and GK Goh.

• ✅ Dr Jonathan Milner, Chairman of the Nuclera Board and CEO of Meltwind Advisory LLP, said:

  “Nuclera is solving one of the most pressing bottlenecks in biologics discovery - the slow, fragmented, and resource-intensive process of synthesizing full-format antibodies. The team’s success in membrane proteins, one of the most challenging protein classes, combined with their microfluidic expertise, places them in a unique position to transform antibody development workflows”.

Soley Therapeutics Announced 💲2️⃣0️⃣0️⃣M Series C Financing

Soley Therapeutics, a San Francisco-based biotech startup focused on developing cell therapies, just announced a $200M Series C financing round (Soley Therapeutics Announces $200 Million Series C Financing to Propel Lead Oncology Programs into the Clinic and Scale Its Cell Stress Sensing Platform).

• ✅ Strong backing from Surveyor Capital as lead investor, alongside 🆕 and existing investors, is a clear vote of confidence in both the platform and the depth of Soley’s preclinical pipeline across oncology, neurodegenerative, and metabolic diseases.

• ✅ This round marks an important inflection point for the company, with their 👉 lead asset in AML on track for IND filing in 2026, and a 👉 second oncology asset for solid tumors entering IND-enabling studies. The financing will also support continued 👉 scale-up of Soley’s cell stress sensing platform.

• ✅ Soley’s platform translates the cellular information of stress biology into mechanistic insight, revealing novel drug candidates that otherwise would be missed. Soley deploys full-stack AI via its collaboration with Oracle, including OCI AI Infrastructure, NVIDIA AI Enterprise and NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs. By combining foundational biology, proprietary imaging, first-in-class automation, and integrated AI tools, Soley has rapidly built a pipeline that spans oncology, neurodegenerative disorders, metabolic diseases, and other areas.

NVIDIA and Eli Lilly announced will jointly invest up to 💲1️⃣ billion over 5️⃣ years to establish a 🆕 AI research lab

On the first day of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, NVIDIA (NVDA) and Eli Lilly and Company (LLY) announced plans to jointly invest up to US$1 billion over 5️⃣ years to establish a 🆕 AI research lab focused on accelerating drug discovery (First-of-Its-Kind AI Drug Discovery Lab: NVIDIA, Eli Lilly Announce $1B Investment at J.P. Morgan Healthcare).

• ✅ The initiative deepens an existing partnership between the two companies and reflects the growing convergence of advanced computing and pharmaceutical research as the industry seeks ways to improve R&D productivity.

University of Pennsylvania launched 🛸 💲5️⃣0️⃣M fund with pharma group BioNTech

The University of Pennsylvania in the US has formed a $50Μ life sciences venture fund in partnership with German biopharmaceutical company BioNTech and Osage University Partners, a university spinout investor (University of Pennsylvania launches $50m fund with pharma group BioNTech).

• ✅ The PxB Fund (Penn BioNTech Innovative Therapeutics Seed Fund) will invest in early stage life science companies based on the university’s intellectual property and/or founded by Penn researchers. The fund focuses on seed and series A investments in therapeutics, diagnostics, platforms and research tools.

• ✅ Through the PxB Fund, BioNTech aims to deepen its collaboration with the univesrity and increase its visibility into emerging therapeutics.

• ✅ The fund will be managed by Osage University Partners (OUP), a US-based venture capital firm that invests in startups from research labs and universities.

• ✅ The University of Pennsylvania has had some recent exits of biotech spinouts including Capstan Therapeutics, which was acquired by pharmaceutical company AbbVie, and Interius BioTherapeutics, which was bought by Kite Pharma, a US developer of cancer immunotherapy products.

Boltz PBC launched 🛸 with 💲2️⃣8️⃣M

Boltz PBC has launched with a mission to advance open science for AI drug discovery with a $28 million seed from Zetta Venture Partners, Amplify Partners, and more (Boltz PBC Launches with $28M to Democratize AI Platforms for Drug Discovery).

• ✅ As a company, Boltz has unveiled a preview of their platform, Boltz Lab, along with their first agents for small-molecule discovery and protein design. The platform is built to remove the practical bottlenecks prominent in adoption, including compute cost, scalable infrastructure, and effective interfacing with scientific workflows.

• ✅ The 🆕 company has already solidified a multi-year collaboration with Pfizer.

Vizgen Announced 💲4️⃣8️⃣M Financing

Vizgen, Inc, a leader in spatial multi-omics just announced the closing of a $48M financing (Vizgen Announces $48 Million Financing).

• ✅ The financing was led by ARCH Venture Partners and co-led by M Ventures and Northpond Ventures with participation from the company’s existing investors. Proceeds from the round will be used to execute on Vizgen’s innovation roadmap, expand its ability to serve researchers globally, and scale manufacturing operations.

• ✅ US-based Vizgen raises $48M to expand global access to its spatial multi-omics platform, accelerate product innovation, and scale manufacturing for single-cell research tools.

Avenue Biosciences Raised 💲5️⃣.7️⃣M for Protein Tech

Avenue Biosciences, a protein engineering technology company, announced a $5.7M seed extension funding round co-led by Balnord and Tesi, with participation from Voima Ventures, Inventure, University of Helsinki, and Dimerent (Avenue Biosciences Raises $5.7M for Protein Tech).

• ✅ The funding will support scaling a high-throughput platform that measures and modulates the protein secretory pathway, a key 🔐 bottleneck in therapeutic protein manufacturing.

French pharma Servier establishes Servier Ventures

Servier, an independent international pharmaceutical company governed by a Foundation, announced the creation of Servier Ventures, a fully owned corporate venture fund (Launch of Servier Ventures, its strategic corporate), committed to investing an initial amount of 💶2️⃣0️⃣0️⃣M in innovative biotech and technological companies.

• ✅ The primary goal is to invest in biotech companies shaping the future of oncology and neurology, expanding Servier’s reach across the global innovation ecosystem to advance science and unlock tomorrow’s breakthrough therapies for the benefit of patients.

Novoron wins 💲2️⃣.5️⃣M NIH grant

Novoron Bioscience, a San Diego-based biotechnology company developing therapies for neurodegenerative diseases and neurological injury, has received a $2.5M Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health (Novoron Bioscience Awarded $2.5 Million NIH/NIA SBIR Grant to Accelerate Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery with Human Brain Organoids), to support the development and commercialization of Novoron’s human brain 🧠 organoid platform designed to identify potential Alzheimer’s drugs that can slow or stop disease progression by blocking the spread of tau between cells.

• ✅ Novoron’s platform uses human iPSC-derived cortical organoids that capture realistic cell interactions and synaptic networks. This creates a more predictive setting for early drug discovery and helps narrow the field to compounds with a greater chance of clinical success.

• ✅ The 🆕 funding will accelerate several planned milestones:

  • 👉Validate a high-throughput organoid screening platform with functional and molecular readouts relevant to tau spread.

  • 👉Run a benchmarking screen to test approximately 3️⃣,0️⃣9️⃣6️⃣ FDA-approved compounds for their ability to limit tau propagation.

  • 👉Apply transcriptomic and AI-supported analyses to rank compounds based on efficacy and safety signals.

US-based EpiBiologics, a Genentech spinout, raises 💲1️⃣0️⃣7️⃣M Series B

US-based EpiBiologics, a Genentech spinout which specializes in tissue-selective extracellular protein degradation, raised $107M Series B (EpiBiologics Closes $107M Series B Funding). The company intends to use the funds to expand operations and its development efforts. Its proprietary EpiTAC platform is a modular bispecific antibody system that enables targeted degradation of disease-driving extracellular proteins in a tissue-specific manner.

• ✅ The round was co-led by GV (Google Ventures) and Johnson & Johnson, through its corporate venture capital organization, Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc (JJDC).

• ✅ Novartis Venture Fund (NVF), Aulis Capital, Avego BioScience Capital, and Samsara BioCapital joined JJDC as 🆕 investors. In addition to GV, existing investors Polaris Partners, Digitalis Ventures, Taiho Ventures, Vivo Capital, Codon Capital, and Mission BioCapital also participated in the round.

Collaborations 🤝

Genmab partnered with Anthropic

Genmab A/S (Nasdaq: GMAB) announced a partnership with Anthropic to advance and enhance the company’s R&D processes through the adoption of cutting-edge AI capabilities (Genmab Partners with Anthropic to Accelerate Research and Development Through Agentic Artificial Intelligence).

• 🧶 Under the agreement, Genmab and Anthropic will design and deploy custom, Claude-powered agentic AI solutions to support Genmab’s clinical development priorities.

• 🧶 Genmab’s teams will use Claude to accelerate data processing, analysis, and document generation within defined guardrails and with human oversight to streamline complex operational activities, enhance agility, and improve consistency in supporting Genmab’s clinical programs as they progress toward key 🔐 regulatory milestones.

BostonGene partnered with Ottimo Pharma

BostonGene, the developer of the leading AI foundation model for tumor and immune biology, announced a strategic collaboration with Ottimo Pharma Limited, an innovative, clinical-stage biotech company developing one-of-a-kind PD-1/VEGFR2 dual paratopic antibodies to extend the lives of patients living with cancer (BostonGene Announces Collaboration with Ottimo Pharma to Optimize and Accelerate Development of First-in-Class PD-1/VEGFR2 Immuno-Oncology Therapy Using AI).

• 🧶 The partnership will utilize BostonGene’s advanced AI platform to apply multiomic analytics and expedite the clinical development of Ottimo’s novel therapeutic candidate, OTP-01.

• 🧶 OTP-01 is a first-in-class, bifunctional, dual paratopic antibody therapeutic that maintains a conventional IgG architecture while being engineered to simultaneously inhibit two critical signaling pathways, PD-1 and VEGFR2, with the goal of enhancing anti-tumor immunity and overcoming both primary and acquired resistance that limit the effectiveness of current immuno-oncology approaches.

Fluxion Therapeutics and University of Michigan’s CCG Partner

Fluxion Therapeutics and the Center for Chemical Genomics (CCG) at the University of Michigan have entered a 2️⃣-year research collaboration to develop AI and ML models for the automated analysis of ion channel electrophysiology (Fluxion Therapeutics and University of Michigan’s CCG Partner to Transform Ion Channel Drug Discovery Using AI).

• 🧶 The partnership combines Fluxion's proprietary AI-driven analytics with the CCG's high-throughput screening (HTS) infrastructure.

• 🧶 Together, the organizations will develop 'Omics-scale datasets to standardize and accelerate the interpretation of automated patch-clamp (APC) data—a critical bottleneck in current drug discovery.

Epivax’s 🆕 publication with FDA and CUBRC

EpiVax, that leads the industry in preclinical immunogenicity assessment and sequence optimization for biologic therapeutics and vaccines by utilizing proprietary methods for T cell epitope identification and characterization and employing a wide range of validated in silico and in vitro techniques, together with with U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and CUBRC, Inc (Buffalo, NY) scientist collaborators, announced the publication of a study titled “Immunogenicity Risk Assessment of Peptide-Related Impurities Identified in Generic Teriparatide Products.”

• 🧶 The study uses a series of different tools to evaluate whether peptide-related impurities may influence unwanted immune responses in generic teriparatide (TPT)—an important consideration for ensuring the safety and comparability of generic peptide drugs.

• 🧶 Teriparatide, a recombinant peptide used to treat osteoporosis, is among the peptide products highlighted in a recent FDA guidance that recommends that applicants assess immunogenicity risk for synthetic generics submitted under an abbreviated 🆕 drug application (ANDA). While establishing active pharmaceutical ingredient sameness is a key 🔐 regulatory requirement, impurities arising from manufacturing processes may introduce sequence changes with the potential to generate 🆕 “T-cell epitopes”.

Eli Lilly signs up to 💲9️⃣5️⃣0️⃣M deal with US-based InduPro

InduPro, Inc, a biotechnology company defining membrane protein spatial relationships to create novel therapeutics for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases, entered a global strategic collaboration and licensing agreement, and equity investment, with Eli Lilly and Company to discover novel oncology treatments using InduPro’s proximity-guided platform (InduPro Therapeutics Announces Strategic Collaboration with Lilly to Develop First-in-Class Bispecific/Multispecific Oncology Therapeutics).

• 🧶 Under the terms of the agreement, the two companies will collaborate on up to three targets, for a total deal value of up to approximately $950M. Lilly will also make an equity investment in InduPro.

• 🧶 By leveraging Tumor Associated Proximity Antigens (TAPAs), surface antigens that are spatially co-localized and often functionally linked to tumor-associated antigens (TAAs) within the tumor microenvironment, the companies will use InduPro’s proximity-based platform to discover novel, disease-specific protein-target pairs. This strategy is designed to enable 🆕 therapeutic approaches for bispecific antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) and multispecific T-cell engagers, offering improved safety, potency, and tumor selectivity.

Manas AI announced a partnership with Schrödinger

Manas AI, a full-stack, AI native drug discovery and development company, has entered into a strategic agreement with Schrödinger, Inc.

• 🧶 The agreement grants Manas AI significant access to Schrödinger’s industry-leading physics-based computational platform, positioning Manas AI at the forefront of AI-driven molecular discovery.

• 🧶 Manas AI’s proprietary algorithms are designed to find binders of all molecular classes, including small molecules, nanobodies, and siRNA targets.

• 🧶 This agreement includes deep access to Schrödinger’s computational molecular discovery platform combined with expert support aimed at optimizing the impact of the platform. This bespoke level of technology access is designed to ensure Manas AI’s algorithms are fully harmonized with Schrödinger’s predictive power.

Chai Discovery partners with Eli Lilly

Chai Discovery, the AI company building a computer-aided design suite for molecules, announced a collaboration with Eli Lilly and Company (Lilly) to accelerate biologics discovery using artificial intelligence (Chai Discovery Announces Collaboration with Eli Lilly and Company to Accelerate Biologics Discovery).

• 🧶 Under the collaboration, Lilly will deploy Chai’s frontier AI platform to design novel biologic therapeutics for multiple targets.

• 🧶 In addition, Chai will develop a purpose-built AI model, exclusively for use by Lilly, trained on large-scale proprietary Lilly data and tailored to Lilly’s discovery workflows.

• 🧶 The collaboration follows a period during which a set of Chai’s model designs were evaluated by Lilly.

UK’s Basecamp Research, with NVIDIA and Microsoft, launched 🛸 AI models

In collaboration with Nvidia, Basecamp Research has now leveraged AI to unlock programmable gene insertion, which places large therapeutic DNA sequences at precise locations in the human genome (Basecamp Research Achieves Programmable Gene Insertion with EDEN AI Models).

• 🧶 The achievement expands upon CRISPR-based approaches that are restricted to small gene edits and address a limited number of disease indications.

• 🧶 The 🆕 family of evolutionary AI models, named EDEN, was trained on approximately 9️⃣.7️⃣ trillion biological tokens from BaseData, Basecamp’s proprietary genomics dataset.

• 🧶 EDEN guides multi-modality therapeutic discovery by learning biological design principles from evolution.

• 🧶 BaseData offers a 1️⃣0️⃣-fold expansion of known protein diversity when compared to all public databases combined and was collected over 5️⃣ years from more than 1️⃣5️⃣0️⃣ locations across 2️⃣8️⃣ countries and 5️⃣ continents.

• 🧶 EDEN is described in a preprint posted on bioRxiv that has not yet been peer reviewed. The large interdisciplinary team spans over 5️⃣0️⃣ authors and includes experts from Nvidia and Microsoft.

• 🧶 In parallel, Basecamp secured an investment from NVentures, Nvidia’s venture capital arm, in its pre-Series C round. The amount is undisclosed.

Freenome teams up with NVIDIA to scale AI for early cancer detection

Freenome has a 🆕 initiative to advance its blood-based early cancer screening program by leveraging NVIDIA deep learning technology and expertise to improve the recognition of cancer-specific patterns in the blood at the disease’s earliest stages.

• 🧶 With NVIDIA accelerated computing, Freenome will scale up training of its proprietary cell-free DNA (cfDNA) fragment-level deep learning (FLDL) models, as well as build an open-source methylation foundational model.

• 🧶 Freenome’s multiomics platform profiles DNA methylation, RNA, protein and other analytes, and for each individual, generates billions of data points across different modalities.

• 🧶 The use of AI/ML and deep learning is critical to determining which samples harbor cancer signals.

• 🧶 For cfDNA, Freenome’s FLDL model outperforms the state-of-the-art ML method and shows improved performance with increases in training data volume.

Acquisitions 🛒

AstraZeneca Acquired Modella AI

AstraZeneca announced at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference 2026 the acquisition of Modella AI, a Boston-based biomedical AI startup focused on oncology (AstraZeneca Buys Modella AI: Why Biomarkers, Not Molecules, Are the Real Prize).

• 🧶 The deal expands a multi-year partnership (inked in July 2025) into a full acquisition, signaling AstraZeneca’s intent to embed AI into oncology drug development rather than just collaborate at arm’s length.

• 🧶 Financial details were not disclosed.

insitro to acquire Israel-based CombinAbleAI

insitro, the AI therapeutics company built on causal biology, announced the acquisition of CombinAbleAI and the launch 🛸 of insitro’s TherML™ (Therapeutic Machine Learning) platform (insitro to Acquire CombinAbleAI to Complete its Full Stack, Modality-Agnostic AI Platform for Drug Discovery and Design).

• 🧶 The acquisition, which is expected to close in late January 2026, will complete insitro's full stack, modality-agnostic capability spanning small molecules, oligonucleotides, antibodies, and other complex biologics with precision – enabling biology to guide both modality selection and molecular design from target discovery through developability assessment.

• 🧶 This integrated approach accelerates the generation of clinic-ready assets while reducing late-stage development risk.

• 🧶 TherML™ integrates CombinAbleAI’s advanced, next generation biologics expertise with insitro’s existing small molecule and oligonucleotide capabilities, unifying therapeutic design across all major drug modalities in a single AI engine

Hippocratic AI acquired Grove A

Hippocratic AI, building out its life sciences division to accelerate generative and agentic AI in the biopharma and medtech sectors (developing patient-facing generative AI healthcare agents), acquired Grove AI a startup that offers agentic AI for pharma R&D and clinical trial operations (JPM26: Hippocratic AI acquires Grove AI, taps life sciences leaders to focus on biopharma, medtech).

• 🧶 The company’s AI solutions aim to streamline clinical trial participant engagement, notably with an AI agent named “Grace”, with the goal of speeding up recruitment and reducing operational burdens in life sciences.

• 🧶 Grove AI, which launched 🛸 in 2024, supported more than 1️⃣0️⃣ million patient interactions over the past year.

• 🧶 Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

More News 📰

Medable launched 🛸 AI agent to automate trial master file processing

Medable announced at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, held from January 12–15, that it will be presenting its trial master file (TMF) AI agent, which automates labor-intensive processes involved in trial document management (Medable Presents AI Agent for Automating Trial Master File Processes at JP Morgan Healthcare Conference).

• 🧵 According to the company, the TMF Agency reduces manual effort in document management, and therefore, improves quality and consistency.

• 🧵 Based on Medable’s Agent Studio, an agentic AI platform for clinical development, the TMF Agency “orchestrates TMF workflows end to end” by autonomously intaking documents, classifying files, and extracting metadata.

• 🧵 These data are prepared for human review before a one-click submission into commonly used eTMF systems (e.g., Veeva Vault, Wingspan, and OpenText). The AI agent is system-agnostic and can be integrated into existing workflows. Human-in-the-loop checkpoints allow for validation, quality control, and audit traceability.

EMA and FDA join forces

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have together compiled 1️⃣0️⃣ principles for good AI practice in drug development (EMA and FDA join forces: Aligned principles on AI use in drug development).

• 🧵 The principles apply across the drug development lifecycle, from early research to clinical trials, extending to manufacturing and safety monitoring.

• 🧵 As a result, they are relevant for drug manufacturers, marketing authorization applicants, and holders. The goal 🥅 is to encourage innovation in drug development while ensuring patient safety.

Owkin Inc

Owkin Inc is making a series of autonomous agents focused on drug discovery and research available to the broader healthcare industry, after cementing partnerships with industry leaders Nvidia Corp and Anthropic PBC (Owkin unveils biology-focused AI agents for clinical research and drug discovery).

• 🧵 The 1️⃣0️⃣-year-old AI company is also releasing its complete agentic infrastructure platform to customers, including a highly curated multimodal patient dataset collected from more than 8️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ hospitals 🏥 globally.

• 🧵 Whereas other AI firms in the biopharma industry are forced to work with data surfaced through lab research, Owkin says its AI agents are trained on clinically relevant insights from a diverse group of real human patients that reflect real diseases far more accurately.

Polaris Quantum Biotech

Polaris Quantum Biotech (PolarisQB) has released a comparative study indicating that its Quantum-Aided Drug Design (QuADD) platform, powered by D-Wave Quantum Inc’s annealing technology, significantly outperforms classical Generative AI in lead identification for drug discovery (Polaris Quantum Biotech Study Demonstrates Quantum Advantage Over Generative AI in Drug Discovery).

• 🧵 The study, currently a preprint on ChemRxiv (A Comparison of Small Molecule Generation Methods in Structure-Based Drug Design: Artificial Intelligence vs Quantum Computing), compared QuADD to the Bond and Interaction generating Diffusion model (BInD), a representative AI-based diffusion algorithm.

• 🧵 The findings suggest that quantum annealing can reduce the timeline for selecting pre-clinical molecular candidates from months to hours while delivering higher-quality results.

• 🧵 The QuADD platform utilizes the D-Wave Advantage system, featuring over 5️⃣,0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ qubits, to solve complex combinatorial optimization problems. By framing drug design as a Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) problem—specifically an adaptation of the “Knapsack Problem”—QuADD explores a theoretical chemical space of up to 10³⁰ molecules. This approach allows for the simultaneous optimization of multiple properties, including binding affinity, synthetic complexity, metabolic stability, and toxicity.

More News 🗞️

Lantern’s Pharma 🆕 A.I. Center of Excellence and Advanced Agentic Labs in Bengaluru, India

Lantern Pharma Inc (NASDAQ: LTRN) announced the establishment of an A.I. Center of Excellence and Advanced Agentic Labs in Bengaluru, India (Lantern Pharma Announces Establishing an A.I. Center of Excellence in India to Industrialize the RADR® Platform and Accelerate Global Development Opportunities).

• 📒 This strategic initiative represents a critical inflection point in Lantern's evolution—transitioning from pioneering AI-enabled drug discovery in cancer to industrializing those capabilities at global scale for the broader drug development community.

• 📒 The A.I. Center of Excellence is planned to be based in Bengaluru and focus on large scale data-engineering, development and refinement of state-of-the-art ML-ready disease models and integration with global biopharma customers and partners.

• 📒 This strategic initiative positions Lantern to scale its proven AI capabilities and platform across oncology and into 🆕 disease categories, meeting growing biopharma partner demand.

• 📒 Hiring for initial positions has already been initiated and Lantern anticipates that expansion and hiring will be cash flow neutral to the company.

Oxford Drug Design announced 🆕 in vivo results

Oxford Drug Design has announced 🆕 in vivo results that further validate its emerging first‑in‑class oncology programme, marking a significant step forward for the Oxford-based AI drug discovery company (Oxford Drug Design reports major in vivo milestone for novel cancer therapy).

• 📒 By utilizing its GenAI platform, the company has completed in vivo validation of a novel therapeutic mechanism designed to target multiple tumour types.

• 📒 In a genetically engineered mouse model replicating the earliest mutational events in colorectal cancer, its lead compound showed statistically significant anti‑tumour activity with efficacy comparable to rapamycin, a benchmark therapy, while demonstrating no detectable toxicity.

• 📒 In advanced 3D tumour models derived from RAS‑driven colorectal cancers, the company’s compound induced cancer cell death in scenarios where rapamycin failed. These models represent two of the most aggressive human colorectal cancer subtypes that carry KRAS mutations associated with poor clinical outcomes.

1️⃣0️⃣ Most Active VC investors in AI Drug Discovery

According to PitchBook data, the 10 most active VC investors in AI drug discovery startups, are

• Lux Capital

  HQ
  New York, NY

  Deal count
  24

  Median deal size
  💲4️⃣0️⃣ million

  Select portfolio companies: Medra, Creyon, Enveda

• 5Y Capital

  HQ
  Shanghai, China

  Deal count
  23

  Median deal size
  💲2️⃣6️⃣.6️⃣ million

  Select portfolio companies: Helixon, Panorama Medicine, Accutar Biotech

• Gaingels

  HQ
  Burlington, VT

  Deal count
  18

  Median deal size
  💲3️⃣2️⃣.7️⃣ million

  Select portfolio companies: Aether, Abalone Bio, Form Bio

• Alumni Ventures

  HQ
  Manchester, NH

  Deal count
  17

  Median deal size
  💲6️⃣8️⃣.8️⃣ million

  Select portfolio companies: Blank Bio, Potato, Iambic

• Andreessen Horowitz

  HQ
  Menlo Park, CA

  Deal count
  16

  Median deal size
  💲4️⃣9️⃣.6️⃣ million

  Select portfolio companies: Formation Bio, Mana Bio, Boltz

• Catalio Capital Management

  HQ
  New York, NY

  Deal count
  16

  Median deal size
  💲8️⃣1️⃣.5️⃣ million

  Select portfolio companies: Iambic, Superluminal Medicines, Octant Bio

• OrbiMed

  HQ
  New York, NY

  Deal count
  16

  Median deal size
  💲6️⃣5️⃣ million

  Select portfolio companies: Conguence TX, Iambic, Treeline

• Khosla Ventures

  HQ
  Menlo Park, CA

  Deal count
  15

  Median deal size
  💲3️⃣0️⃣ million

  Select portfolio companies: Excelsior Sciences, Nabla Bio, Somite AI

• HongShan Capital Group

  HQ
  Hong Kong, China

  Deal count
  13

  Median deal size
  💲3️⃣3️⃣ million

  Select portfolio companies: D3 Bio, Insilico Medicine, MoleculeMind

• MSD Global Health Innovation Fund

  HQ
  Whitehouse, New Jersey

  Deal count
  13

  Median deal size
  💲1️⃣6️⃣ million

  Select portfolio companies: Bighat Biosciences, Zephyr AI, Verge Genomics