Un-locking 🔐 Data to Transform Biology (part II)
Un-locking 🔐 Data to Transform Biology (part II)
Trends on TechBio: Pace Ventures, Giant Ventures, Trisonic Discovery, Thoughtworks, Big_Bets, Cradle Bio, Mercia and Octant Bio
This week’s updates:
Un-locking 🔐 Data to Transform Biology (part I)
Trends on TechBio: WhiteLab Genomics, Sinopia, Cure51, Owkin, Parallel Bio, PipeBio, Turbine AI, IridescentBio Bio and Peptone
Un-locking 🔐 Data to Transform Biology (part II)
Trends on TechBio: Pace Ventures, Giant Ventures, Trisonic Discovery, Thoughtworks, Big_Bets, Cradle Bio, Mercia and Octant Bio
Un-locking 🔐 Data to Transform Biology (part III)
Trends on TechBio: New Atlantis, IPA (BioStrand, Talem), Aging Intervention Foundation, Synthace, Blume VC, Elucidate Bio and Genesis Therapeutics
“For me, I think the greatest achievements of science is to allow humanity to realize that our world is comprehensible. Through science, rational thinking, we can understand how the universe works.”
― Jim Al-Khalili
Pace Ventures Enigma
Founded in 2021 Pace Ventures Enigma is a venture capital firm based in Berlin, Germany. The firm prefers to invest in the climate-tech and health-tech sectors, across the United States and Europe, with initial investments of 500K―1,5M. Pace Ventures is led by Marius Swart investing as co-lead or follower investor at Pre-seed and Seed stages. So far, they have invested at the following health-tech companies:
FabricNano: unlocking the potential of enzymes to replace petrochemical products with bio-based alternatives.
FabricNano Limited (2018) is a biotechnology company based in London with the mission to transform industrial chemical processes using cell-free biomanufacturing, with an advanced, flexible and easily-scalable biocatalyst platform. They develop and sell biocatalysts for high volume industrial applications, utilizing a data-driven approach for enzyme and Immobilization Engineering™. Their clients range from startups to international clients like Sumitomo Chemical Company (FabricNano and Sumitomo Chemical America partner to develop the next generation of cell-free bio-manufacturing), Ginkgo Bioworks (Ginkgo Bioworks partners withFabricNano to unleash Immobilization Engineering™ for a wide range of enzyme discovery projects), ALMAC and many more.
The FabricNano process starts with novel Immobilization Engineering™ for enzyme stabilization, followed by budget-conscious protein engineering and process engineering to reach the client’s targets for commercialization of the new biochemical production process. In other words, FabricNano collects all the enzymatic components necessary for biomanufacturing and co-locates them on an artificial surface. The company has tried everything from a nano-wafer fabric made of DNA, to more industrially available materials such as common solid carriers, coffee grinds and even simple rocks (FabricNano is pioneering sustainable chemical production with cell-free biocatalysis). Once the enzymes are durable and stable they can be used to manufacture commodity chemicals like bio-plastics, bio-fuels and certain types of antibiotics that are made using enzymes. For example, the Epoxy E0001-0488-01 with Penicillin Acylase.
Furthermore, these biocatalysts 🔩 are what is known as “drop-in,” so they can just go into pre-existing industry equipment and know-how (such as packed bed or continuous stirred tank reactors).
🍏 On May 8, 2024, FabricNano and SaaS Veolia announced the trial of carbon capture tech that has been enabled by their partnership (FabricNano partners with Veolia for more efficient carbon capture). Carbon capture is a way to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by capturing the CO2, transporting it and then permanently storing it deep underground.
🍏 On July 2, 2024, FabricNano And Veolia Test Enzyme-Treated Rock Particles For Carbon Sequestration.
The company is backed by Atomico and Hoxton VC (as well as prominent angel investors) and has raised a total funding of $22.6M over 2 rounds from 12 investors. Founder and CEO at FabricNano is Grant Aarons.
CelerisTx: designing novel proximity-inducing compounds (PICs™) to treat diseases with high unmet needs.
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 and headquartered in Silicon Valley, California has raised a total of $18.09M.
Neurable: harnessing the power of the mind using brain-computer interface technology fit for every-day use
Neurable Inc is harnessing the power of the mind using brain-computer interface technology fit for every-day use. Born out of the University of Michigan’s Direct-Brain Interface Laboratory (UM-DBI), Neurable is developing headphones that can track brain signals, detecting when the wearer is in a state of deep focus, or when their focus is slipping. By recording brain activity from around the ear area and then by using AI, Neurable is able to boost that signal so that they can pick up a lot of the core of responses across our brain. The idea behind these headphones is to give people better knowledge of their own state of focus and mental fatigue, and help users decide when to take a break.
🍏 On May 7, 2024, Neurable raised $13M for its brain-computer interface (BCI) technology that can work with everyday products. Neurable has raised over $30M since its funding.
Virtonomy: innovating digital patient twins and virtual patient simulations for the development of medical devices.
Virtonomy GmbH is developing digital patient twins and virtual patient simulations for the development of medical devices. Virtonomy introduced v-Patients, enabling medical device developers to perform development and testing in a virtual environment, thereby accelerating development, reducing risks, expenses and regulatory burden. Their end-to-end digital twin and simulation solution is based on an ever-expanding database of real clinical data to reflect anatomical variability, demographic diversity and pathological conditions.
v-Patients supports the full product life cycle of medical device development, from concept phase to regulatory reporting and clinical practice (Select virtual patient population, Advanced Statistical Shape Models, Advanced Anatomical Simulations and Regulatory Services & Consultation).
On April 12, 2023, Accenture (NYSE: ACN) made a strategic investment, through Accenture Ventures, in Virtonomy, to help Virtonomy further extend its capabilities to medical technology (MedTech) companies across the globe and power the future of medical device design. Munich-based Virtonomy has successfully raised €3.5M.
Giant Ventures (Giant Ventures Global LLP)
Giant Ventures founded in 2019 is a multi-stage, thesis driven firm seeking systemic change across three themes: Climate, Health and Inclusive Capitalism. Giant invests at Pre-Seed, Seed and Series B in Europe and the US, and they are based in London, New York, California, Copenhagen and Stockholm. Co-Founder & Managing Partner is Cameron McLain while Tommy Stadlen is Co-Founder & General Partner.
On January 31, 2024, Giant Ventures, the VC with a knack for backing serial founders, launched $250M in new funds. LPs include Richard Branson, while former UK foreign secretary David Miliband is an advisory board member.
They invest in “Giants” like:
Calm is a software company based in San Francisco, California that produces meditation products, including guided meditations and Sleep Stories on its subscription-based app.
Doccla is Europe’s leading virtual hospital.
🍏 On September 3, 2024, UK-based healthtech Doccla has secured a £35M Series B, led by European VC Lakestar, with new investors French VC Elaia and existing investors General Catalyst, Speedinvest and the investment leg of German media company Bertelsmann also participating (Doccla raises a £35m Series B to scale its virtual ward in France and DACH). Doccla has raised a total of £52M to date. In October of last year, Ratz was the largest shareholder with 35% of the shares, followed by General Catalyst at 26%, Dag Larsson (CEO and cofounder) at 15%, Giant Ventures at 9% and Speedinvest at 11%, according to UK Companies House.
TerraDepth is building fleets of robots for ocean data.
Synonym Bio is developing infrastructure for the bioeconomy.
🍏 On August 7, 2024, Synonym was awarded $1.89M by the Department of Defense (DoD) as part of the Distributed Bioindustrial Manufacturing Program (DBIMP). This funding aims to strengthen the domestic supply of essential materials and ingredients by advancing biomanufacturing infrastructure across the United States.
🍏 On August 1, 2024, Primient, a leader in plant-based, renewable ingredients company, and Synonym announced a strategic partnership to accelerate bio-product innovation and commercialization, furthering the U.S.’ competitive advantage in the race to bring new, functional and affordable biomaterials to market.
Invert Bio is a new standard for data management, analytics and modeling in bioprocessing.
From Data Lakes To AI: An Interview With Invert’s Head Of AI: In this interview Suhas Guruprasad, the Head of AI at Invert, dives into the evolution of AI, distinguishing between the actual capabilities of AI and the often exaggerated hype surrounding it. He also explores the potential implications and transformative effects of AI on the bioprocessing industry.
RxDiet is a New York-based company focused on Food as Medicine that uses AI to create medically tailored food plans, with fresh ingredients and behavioral support, and deliver them directly to patients with chronic illnesses like diabetes and hypertension.
🍏 On July 23, 2024, RxDiet announced a $3M seed funding round led by Giant Ventures, with significant participation from Better Ventures, Form Life, and notable angel investors including Immad Akhund (Mercury Bank) (RxDiet Secures $3 Million Seed Round, to drive down healthcare costs using AI-driven food as medicine).
Trisonic Discovery Ltd
Trisonic Discovery Ltd is an active company incorporated on 🍏 July 23, 2024 with the registered office located in Chorley, Lancashire UK developing the A1 Acoustic Dispenser which permits plate to plate fluid transfers in nanoliter range and above. Trisonic’s mission is to make non-contact, acoustic, low volume dispensing, affordable, reliable and in a compact bench-top form factor that is suitable to even the smallest lab.
As of Q1-2024, A1 is at an advanced prototype stage with the following characteristics:
Small form factor, only 50cm x 50cm x 40cm and under 30KG
Low power, no fans
User friendly software
Simple design, reliable and robust
More detailed specifications will be published as we near the release date.