TechBio September ?? News

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Lantern Pharma Webinar: Harmonic Clinical Trial for Never Smokers with NSCLC-Preliminary patient data readout

Lantern Pharma Inc. (LTRN): A Penny Stock That Will Make You a Millionaire

In this episode ?? Dr. Hubert Zajicek, MD, MBA sits down with the President and CEO Panna Sharma to discuss his remarkable journey at the helm of Lantern Pharma Inc. (Nasdaq: LTRN)

A-Alpha Bio Boosts the Performance of Protein-Protein Interaction Prediction Using NVIDIA BioNeMo on AWS

Recursion's SYCAMORE Trial Readout

QuantumPharm becomes Hong Kong's third-largest IPO of 2024 after pricing shares at HK$5.28

Eli Lilly Joins Forces with AI Startup Genetic Leap in $409M Deal Centered Around RNA-Targeted Drug Discovery

Heart disease is the world’s biggest killer — this Cambridge Uni spinout is using AI to find new treatments

Chai Discovery, an AI biology startup founded six months ago, has raised nearly $30M from heavyweights Thrive Capital and OpenAI to bring AI to drug discovery

Tencent-Backed AI Drug Researcher Xtalpi’s Shares Double On Revenue Rise

Insilico Medicine partners with Inimmune

Altris AI and Heidelberg Engineering announced a new partnership: now AltrisAI platform is available on AppWay, and all HEYEX 2 users can create AI-powered OCT reports.

Barlow Twins Deep Neural Network for Advanced 1D Drug-Target Interaction Prediction

A Novel Rational PROTACs Design and Validation via AI-Driven Drug Design Approach

Automating open source: How Ersilia distributes AI models to advance global health equity

AlphaProteo generates novel proteins for biology and health research

Pepper Bio is launching a collaboration to increase understanding of healthy muscle growth with Novo Nordisk’s Bio Innovation Hub through its Co-Creation Greenhouse Program

How DeepCure taps reinforcement learning for first-in-class therapies

Gilead inks $35M collab with AI drug discovery outfit Genesis

Exciting news at Lantern Pharma Inc. (Nasdaq: LTRN)! They announced that they've been granted?three?additional FDA Rare Pediatric Disease Designations for thier drug candidate LP-184 in three ultra-rare children's cancers; malignant rhabdoid tumors (MRT), rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS), and hepatoblastoma (Lantern Pharma Announces Three U.S. FDA Rare Pediatric Disease Designations Granted to LP-184 in Multiple Ultra Rare Children’s Cancers).

Exciting news at Insilico Medicine! Insilico Medicine Reported Positive Phase IIa Results for ISM001-055, a Novel First-in-Class Drug Treatment for Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) Designed Using Generative AI (Insilico Medicine Reports Positive Phase IIa Results for ISM001-055, a Novel First-in-Class Drug Treatment for Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) Designed Using Generative AI).

DeepMind AI drug discovery spinout Isomorphic Labs issues ￡182m in new shares

Innovent Biologics Partners with WeComput to Enhance AI Drug Discovery

AI for drug discovery: DrugSynthMC to make finding new medication more efficient

SmartCADD: AI-QM Empowered Drug Discovery Platform with Explainability

Medtech startup brings Oracle AI to bear on cancer drug research

Adnexus Biotechnologies Partners with 1606 Corp. for Strategic Investment to Revolutionize AI-Driven Drug Discovery

Large Language Models Revolutionizing Drug Discovery

BioStrand: The Ultimate Convenience in Multi-Omics Data Search and Analysis ??

Longevity

BioAge Labs Inc Targeting Metabolic Aging

On September 3, 2024, the California-based biotech BioAge Labs (a Lilly, NYSE: LLY, partner) Filed for IPO to Advance its Obesity Candidate, an oral apelin receptor agonist azelaprag, past its Phase III STRIDES study and into a registrational Phase III trial. BioAge Labs is also offering its underwriters—Goldman Sachs, Citi, Jefferies and Morgan Stanley—a 30-day option to purchase additional shares of its common stock at the IPO price, minus discounts and commissions. Eventually, BioAge will trade on the Nasdaq Global Market under the ticker symbol BIOA.

BioAge Labs is a longevity company building a pipeline of therapies to treat cardiometabolic diseases by targeting the biology of human aging. BioAge (launched in the US in 2015) paired up with Age Lab AS in August 2022 to tap into the latter firm’s biobank (containing tissue samples collected from healthy humans over many years), and with the help of ML and AI in addition to biobank sampling, they plan now to fuel the search for drug targets in longevity treatment (BioAge Partners With Age Labs to Decipher Healthy Longevity Using Samples and Data From a Preeminent Northern European Biobank).

The key features of their discovery platform are longitudinal omics coupled with serial functional assessments allowing modeling of aging-related progressive physical, cognitive, functional decline and healthspan trajectories captured by starting with healthy individuals. The AI platform offers: Target ID (Bespoke data science ecosystem with AI and ML-enabled insights from their human aging cohorts), Target validation (In-house translational aging core in naturally aged mice) and Discovery & Development (Expertise across discovery and development with a tech-forward approach).

In their pipeline you can find the following assets:

1) Azelaprag (BGE-105), Apelin receptor APJ agonist, Lead indication: Obesity

• Azelaprag is an apelin receptor APJ agonist that increases weight loss and improves body composition in combination with incretin drugs. Azelaprag mimics the activity of the exerkine apelin, a peptide that is released in response to exercise and can be administered orally or intravenously.
• In preclinical results, Azelaprag increases overall weight loss and improves body composition co-administered with incretins: (2x weight loss vs. incretin alone) and restores body composition and function to that of lean controls.
• Phase 1 clinical trials completed in 2019 (198 subjects who received the drug for up to 21 days) showed that BGE-105 had a tolerable safety profile, with acceptable pharmacokinetics supporting once-daily administration.
• On April 14, 2021, BioAge Labs announced that it has entered into an exclusive worldwide license agreement with Amgen, Inc (NASDAQ: AMGN) to develop and commercialize Amgen’s clinical-stage APJ agonist, BGE-105 (named AMG 986 by Amgen), to ameliorate muscle aging. In older people, muscle aging causes loss of strength, mobility, and function, driving mortality and multiple age-related diseases and decreasing overall quality of life.
• In clinical results, Azelaprag demonstrated significant muscle and metabolic benefits in a Phase1b study of older subjects at bedrest, with promotion of energy expenditure and muscle metabolism and prevention of muscle atrophy (BioAge Announces Positive Topline Results for BGE-105 in Phase 1b Clinical Trial Evaluating Muscle Atrophy in Older Volunteers at Bed Rest).
• On October 26, 2023, BioAge Labs Announced Plans for Phase 2 Trial of First-in-Class Apelin Receptor Agonist BGE-105/Azelaprag Co-Administered With Tirzepatide for Treatment of Obesity, in Collaboration With Lilly’s Chorus Organization. As part of the collaboration, Lilly will supply tirzepatide, Chorus will provide clinical trial design and execution expertise and BioAge will retain worldwide exclusive rights to develop and commercialize azelaprag for all indications. Chorus is a small, operationally independent clinical development organization within Eli Lilly and Company that specializes in drug development (A decade of innovation in pharmaceutical R&D: the Chorus model).
• ?? On July 29, 2024, BioAge Labs announced that the first patient has been dosed in the STRIDES Phase 2 clinical trial evaluating BioAge’s lead product candidate azelaprag in combination with tirzepatide for the treatment of obesity in adults aged 55 and older (BioAge Announces First Patient Dosed in the STRIDES Phase 2 Clinical Trial Evaluating Azelaprag as a Novel Treatment for Obesity in Combination with Tirzepatide). STRIDES is being conducted in collaboration with Lilly’s Chorus clinical development organization.
• Moreover, a second Phase 2 trial will assess azelaprag in combination with semaglutide, marketed as Wegovy?by Novo Nordisk A/S (CPH: NOVO-B), with initiation expected in the first half of 2025.

2) BGE-100, NLRP3 inhibitor, Metabolic Disease & Neuroinflammation, IND-enabling

• NLRP3 is a critical component of the inflammasome. However, chronic inflammasome activation leads to pathologic inflammation that drives a vast number of immunologic and fibrotic disorders.
• Analysis of BioAge’s proprietary longitudinal human aging cohorts revealed that NLRP3 levels rise with age and are associated with all-cause mortality.
• BioAge has discovered a family of chemically novel NLRP3 inhibitors and BGE-100 is their most advanced program. It is both potent and highly brain penetrant, with potential to address a range of metabolic and neuroinflammatory conditions. And

3) Discovery, Undisclosed programs in metabolic syndromes.

Additionally, on April 29, 2020 BioAge Labs announced that it has entered into an exclusive worldwide license agreement with Taisho Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd to develop and commercialize Taisho's clinical-stage Hypoxia-inducible factor-prolyl hydroxylase (HIF-PH) inhibitor, BGE-117 (named TS-143 by Taisho), to ameliorate multiple diseases of aging (Study to Evaluate Efficacy and Safety of BGE-117 in the Treatment of Anemia of Aging: NCT04815603). BGE-117 can potentially treat multiple diseases of aging through the activation of HIF-1 target genes that are involved in numerous biological processes including tissue regeneration, erythropoiesis, glycolysis, glucose uptake, vascular remodeling and angiogenesis. Inhibition of HIF-PH increases HIF pathway activation and has the potential to increase resilience, repair and regeneration across multiple body systems.

Before the IPO (BioAge Labs, Inc. is seeking $100 million in an IPO to fund its clinical trials for obesity and insulin sensitivity treatments), BioAge had raised over $300M from premier investors. In particular, on February 13, 2024 BioAge Announced a $170 Million Oversubscribed Series D Financing to Accelerate Development of Obesity and Metabolic Disease Therapeutics, led by Sofinnova Investments. New investors including Longitude Capital, RA Capital, Cormorant Asset Management, RTW Investments, SV Health Investors, OrbiMed Advisors, Sands Capital, Pivotal bioVenture Partners, Osage University Partners, Lilly Ventures, and Amgen Ventures also participated in the round alongside existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Bio + Health.

Finally on August 22, 2024, BioAge Labs announced the appointment of Jean-Pierre Garnier, PhD, as Chair of the company’s Board of Directors. Garnier will succeed current Board Chair James Healy, MD, PhD, managing partner of Sofinnova Investments, who will remain on the Board. Garnier served as the Chief Executive Officer of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) from 2000 to 2008, overseeing the merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham. The CEO of BioAge (and co-founder) is Kristen Fortney.

For more about Anti-Aging Therapies ??

Certified Plasmids: Fighting Data Reproducibility Crisis and Cyberbiosecurity Threats

GenoFab Inc

GenoFAB (2019, US) leverages the power of automation to increase the productivity of R&D in biotechnology, by partnering with biotechnology companies and life scientists who need certified ?? gene delivery solutions. To do so, GenoFab integrates engineering and data science to deliver custom gene delivery solutions that meet its clients projects unique requirements by offering:

• Designing and assembling of libraries of sequence-verified ???? gene delivery vectors derived from libraries of genetic parts and design rules. GenoFAB's biofoundry technology can produce large libraries of vector candidates to optimize vector performance rationally.
• Whole plasmid sequencing ?? of existing plasmids or plasmids developed by GenoFAB. GenoFAB sequencing workflow strives to minimize sequencing errors by combining short-read data from Illumina (ILMN) and long-read data from Oxford Nanopore (ONT). Short and long reads are analyzed using their hybrid assembly algorithm.??
• Testing vector libraries in vitro ?? ?? by transfection in cell cultures then measuring gene expression using fluorescence microscopy, mass spectrometry, flow cytometry, real-time qPCR and other assays. The in vitro testing generates large sets of high-quality data suitable for ML or AI analysis.?
• Offering Plasmid Certification ??: The GenoFAB Standard Identification Number (GSIN) is a cryptographic technology used to secure the distribution of plasmids encoding gene delivery vectors. Inserting a GSIN digital certificate in the plasmids allows business partners to verify the plasmid's integrity and authenticity and retrieve the plasmid documentation.?
• Data Analysis ??: Statistical analysis of their clients testing data to identify sources of variation. Predictive ML models to guide experiment and prioritize plasmids for testing.

Jean Peccoud founded GenoFAB wanting to improve the reproducibility of drug development programs. Low reproducibility rates within life science research undermine cumulative knowledge production and contribute to both delays and costs of therapeutic drug development. An analysis of past studies indicated that the cumulative (total) prevalence of irreproducible preclinical research exceeds 50%, resulting in approximately US $28,000,000,000 (US$28B) per year spent on preclinical research that is not reproducible, in the United States alone!

Moreover, so far more than 70% of all researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist's experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments!

But Dr. Peccoud is interested also in cyberbiosecurity threats that can emerge at the interface between biological space and cyberspace.

Recently, Peccoud’s team built a plasmid that included a 12kb computer-generated DNA sequence. When they compared this sequence to content in the GenBank database, the BLAST search algorithm did not return anything because the computer-generated sequence did not have any homology to any biological sequence.

“Is that really the right way to look at it?” Peccoud posed.

“If you have 12kb of DNA sequences in a plasmid and you have absolutely no information about that, that's the one that you should actually be losing sleep over.”

Biotechs Bolster Biosecurity to Safeguard the Future of Nucleic Acid Sequencing

Today, Dr. Peccoud is the Abell Chair in Synthetic Biology in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Colorado State University (CSU) and he leads the Colorado Cyberbiofoundry, a high-throughput facility to accelerate the development of new viral vectors and other gene delivery systems for biomedical applications. Moreover, since 2008 Dr. Peccoud has advised the U.S. Department of Defense and members of the intelligence community to help them anticipate and manage cyberbiosecurity threats emerging at the interface between biological space and cyberspace.

GenoFAB started as a research project, the GenoCAD, funded from the National Science Foundation (NSF) from 2009 to 2013, that covered the development of the GenoCAD software and maintenance of its underlying infrastructure (Virginia Bioinformatics Institute-developed synthetic biology tool transitions to private sector).

For more about the reproducibility crisis in biology:

https://marinatalamanou.substack.com/p/biomedical-data-mining

AI Drug Discovery in South Korea

Syntekabio

Last week (September 6, 2024) Syntekabio announced its participation at the BioTechX USA event, being held on September 17-18, 2024 in Philadelphia, PA where it will give an in-depth talk on its AI-driven solutions for drug discovery.

Syntekabio?(KOSDAQ: 226330) (2009, South Korea) is a global partner for AI drug discovery and repurposing drugs (AI Drug Repurposing: source, source), using DeepMatcher, an AI drug development platform that combines new drug development technology and big data (such as biomarkers for individual cancer drug screening and disease susceptibility by immunotyping, pharmacogenomic typing, and predicting multi-omics information-based drug adverse effects, etc).

The DeepMatcher is a compound-protein interaction (CPI) prediction platform that offers a unique opportunity to accelerate hit discovery, hit-to-lead, and lead optimization processes, based on their proprietary biophysics-informed DL and large chemical spaces. So far, DeepMatcher has been successfully applied across protein families such as kinases, G protein coupled receptors (GPCR) and nuclear receptors and is also used for: Small Molecules Discovery, Neoantigens, Cell Therapies, Antibody Discovery, Drug Repurposing, Combination Therapy and Clinical Genomic Analysis.

So far, the company has functionally segmented the entire process of AI drug development and clinical genomics analysis into step-by-step modules and has created the "Cloud-SaaS” service applying Cloud supercomputing automation processes.

At the BioTechX event (schedule a meeting by clicking here) Syntekabio will be discussing how their AI-driven technologies can improve and accelerate their R&D activities for:

• Addressing Data Scarcity in Drug Discovery with Physics-based AI Models
• Flexible Molecular Docking for Neoantigen & Antibody Drug Prediction; Pre-Clinical Application

Additionally, during the event the company will highlight its two novel in silico biologics platforms, Neo-ARSTM and Ab-ARSTM, for personalized or universal neoantigen cancer vaccine and novel antibody drug prediction, respectively.

Moreover, Syntekabio's AI can access over 10 billion known compounds as well as 1,400 in vitro/in vivo compatible drug targets covering over 70% of human diseases. This technology is powered by Syntekabio's AI Bio-Supercom Center, which houses an immense infrastructure of 5,000 servers (as of Q1 2024), 40,000 CPU cores and 2,500 GPUs fueling the company's algorithms. The ABS Center, a crucial resource for drug development, integrating supercomputing and AI systems to enable highly precise simulations and modeling in drug development, opened in October 2023 and currently is producing AI drug candidate material on a factory-wide scale.

On July 31, 2023, Syntekabio signed a MoU with Metaclipse Therapeutics, a USA based biotechnology company developing immunotherapies for cancer and vaccines for infectious disease, for joint research on development of a personalized immunotherapy for cancer. On August 31, 2023, Syntekabio announced that it has signed another MoU this time with POLARISqb, a drug discovery company that utilizes the optimization power of quantum computing, in order to combine the companies’ vanguard drug research platforms.

• ?? POLARISqb is the first company in the world to develop a drug discovery engine that utilizes the optimisation power of quantum computing to search unstructured, exponentially large datasets in order to explore novel chemical space, and create new drugs.
• At the heart of Polarisqb (Polaris?Quantum?Biotech) technology is their revolutionary and agile Tachyontm drug design platform, used for executing distributed molecular design work across the cloud, and managed by an automated process that allows the Polarisqb platform to search immense chemical libraries while also scaling up to execute multiple parallel projects simultaneously. By developing proprietary software for quantum systems that designs molecular assets faster and with a higher quality than anyone else, Polarisqb is able to deliver novel drug leads in a fraction of the timeline and cost of current drug development processes.

On top of that, in June 2023 Syntekabio expanded in the US by partnering up with a US clinical research organization (Target Health) to enter the world’s largest market for drug development.

On June 20, 2024, Syntekabio announced the signing of a strategic MoU with the global therapeutics licensing and PR platform company, bioSeedin (a subsidiary of ACROBiosystems) to leverage bioSeedin’s global network for the promotion of Syntekabio's AI drug active compound database, STB LaunchPad, as well as its AI-driven drug discovery technologies.

• LaunchPad is a list of disease-specific drug candidates obtained in advance by DeepMatcher. Customers can select drugs by disease and target according to their stage of development and Syntekabio provides various AI solutions to rapidly develop the candidate drugs into therapeutics through step-by-step customized consulting and optimization.
• Moreover, Syntekabio's Develop Now, Pay Later model enables pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to test the validity of a target protein of interest without incurring any upfront costs. Should a project demonstrate viability, Syntekabio then employs its STB LaunchPad program, powered by its proprietary AI-driven DeepMatcher technology platform, to deliver hits and optimized leads as well as IND-enabled candidates.

Syntekabio has raised a total of $33.5M. Their latest funding was raised on Apr 3, 2024 from a Post-IPO Equity round (Syntekabio Secures KRW 10B for AI Drug Development from Korea Investment Partners).

Republic of Korea and AI Drug Discovery

Virtual Screening

RosettaVS: Structure-Based Virtual Screen

Just this month, a new highly accurate structure-based virtual screen method was presented, the RosettaVS, for predicting docking poses and binding affinities (An artificial intelligence accelerated virtual screening platform for drug discovery), and was developed to outperform other state-of-the-art methods on a wide range of benchmarks, partially due to its ability to model receptor flexibility.

This new platform was developed by improving a prior physics-based Rosetta general force field, RosettaGenFF, yielding an improved forcefield named RosettaGenFF-VS. Based on this new force field, a state-of-the-art virtual screening protocol was developed using Rosetta GALigandDock, hereafter referred to as RosettaVS. RosettaVS implements two high-speed ligand docking modes: virtual screening express (VSX) designed for rapid initial screening, while the virtual screening high-precision (VSH) is a more accurate method used for final ranking of the top hits from the initial screen.

In particular, the modeling of receptors flexibility was incorporated into a new open-source AI accelerated virtual screening platform, used to screen multi-billion compound libraries against two unrelated targets, a ubiquitin ligase target KLHDC2 and the human voltage-gated sodium channel NaV1.7.

For both targets, hit compounds were discovered, including seven hits (14% hit rate) to KLHDC2 and four hits (44% hit rate) to NaV1.7, all with single digit micromolar binding affinities, and screening in both cases was completed in less than seven days. Finally, a high resolution X-ray crystallographic structure validated the predicted docking pose for the KLHDC2 ligand complex, demonstrating the effectiveness of RosettaVS.

You can find here the Major types of virtual screening algorithms that are available right now for drug screening (2023).

Chemical Space: Known and Virtual

Searching for a new drug candidate, means searching and wandering around in a?vast chemical space, comprising >10^60 molecules (…keep in mind that there are something like 10^22 to 10^24 stars in our Universe). In particular, the?known chemical space—that includes public databases and corporate collections—probably contains something like 10^8 molecules (100 million), but the?virtual chemical space might contain 10^60 compounds when considering only basic structural rules, or a more modest 10^20 – 10^24 molecules if combination of known fragments are considered.?

Since the chemical space is far too large for an exhaustive "exploration", one is therefore left only with a partial, targeted "exploration" inside smaller virtual libraries and smaller chemical libraries. So, numerous?in silico methods are used to virtual screen compounds from virtual chemical spaces along with?in vitro?high-throughput screening experiments of chemical libraries, in order to identify drug candidates. Nowadays, several chemical spaces are open access, including PubChem, ChemBank, DrugBank, ChemDB and more. While some solutions for virtual libraries are:

• A partnership with Enamine and Cresset will enable screening of ultra-large chemical spaces as part of the virtual screening process in drug discovery.
• Discover eXplore: the largest virtual accessible and actionable Chemical Space providing over 7 trillion compounds for your novel drug discovery research by eMolecules.
• PolarisQB announced integration of Virtual Libraries and Fragmentation schemes from chemical innovator Liverpool ChiroChem into Quantum-Aided Drug Design.

The logic behind the design of both types of libraries is often similar, and the two methods—experimental for real compound libraries and computational for virtual compound libraries—often complement each other in drug discovery.?In the end, both types of libraries are commonly run in parallel, and the results of one are compared to the other aiming at discovering promising new drug leads.?

Virtual Screening with NVIDIA: NIM Agent Blueprint

Aiming at making the virtual screening faster and smarter, NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) released on August 27, 2024 the NIM Agent Blueprint for generative AI-based virtual screening (Better Molecules, Faster: NVIDIA NIM Agent Blueprint Redefines Hit Identification With Generative AI-Based Virtual Screening), that identifies and improves virtual hits in a smarter and more efficient way and has at its core three essential AI models:

• AlphaFold2,
• MolMIM, a novel model developed by NVIDIA that generates molecules while simultaneously optimizing for multiple properties, such as high solubility and low toxicity, and
• DiffDock, an advanced tool for quickly modeling the binding of small molecules to their protein targets.

These three models work in concert to improve the hit-to-lead process, making it more efficient and faster. Benchling, Dotmatics, Terray, TetraScience and Cadence Molecular Sciences (OpenEye), are all using NIM Agent Blueprints in their computer-aided drug discovery platforms.

AI-Driven Virtual Screening Companies

Codexis (NASDAQ: CDXS) is a leading enzyme engineering company that has a proprietary platform, the CodeEvolver, that provides in silico high-throughput assay screening. By using powerful ML tools, sophisticated molecular, cellular and bioanalytical workflows, at Codexis they can design and screen libraries of thousands of enzyme variants in high throughput, then sequence every variant and correlate its sequence with its performance in a highly application-relevant screen. Among Codexis' partners you can find

On February 21, 2024, the South Korean pharmaceutical giant Daewoong (Daewoong Pharmaceuticals Co., Ltd, ???? ????) (KRX: 069620) announced that it has completed its own new drug development system using AI, the Daewoong AI System (DAISY). In particular, they developed a collection of 800 million known compounds, called Daewoong Advanced Virtual Database, or DAVID, and a separate AI system called AI-based Virtual Screening (AIVS) tool to detect active substances targeting specific proteins based on 3D modeling technology. Utilizing both DAVID and AIVS, DAISY allows Daewoong researchers to discover new compounds and quickly predict drug properties, enabling also ADMET (Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism, Excretion, and Toxicity) research.

DiaDem is a EU project developing a platform for organic electronics providing a one-stop-shop solution from digital discovery to experimental verification by linking the virtual screening of small molecule candidates with the chemical supply chain. The DiaDEM platform boosts the development of organic electronics, providing a one-stop-shop solution from digital discovery to experimental verification. DiaDEM comprises an exhaustive database of materials with optoelectronic properties, advanced scientific models for refinement and direct link to the supply chain for efficient procurement of materials for in-house validation. The platform is now ready for beta testing and looking for beta-testers from both academia and industry.

Pharmacelera (2015, Spain) is applying quantum theory to boost drug design via their two primary software packages: PharmScreen (for an accurate ligand-based virtual screening, 3D-LBVS), PharmQSAR (3D quantitative structure-activity relationship/QSAR tool that enables a combination of multiple fields of interaction in order to perform comparative molecular field analysis and comparative similarity indices analysis studies) and exaScreen (for novel synthesizable hits from a 3D limitless space).

Deep Apple Therapeutics is accelerating drug discovery with structure-based large library virtual screening and DL models. The San Francisco-based company founded in 2021 combines cryo-EM to explore receptor conformations (GPCRs and other target classes), DL and the docking of multi-billion compound libraries generated using the company's proprietary Orchard.ai? algorithm.

Amplify Partners

Amplify Partners (2012, US) is an early-stage venture capital firm for technical founders building the future of developer tools, AI and ML, data, and cybersecurity. Amplify has assembled a team of the best leaders in sales, recruiting, growth and marketing, and their job is to do work for you and with you. Amplify is an early stage investor since they meet many of their founders well before they start their companies, or even settle on a product idea. Then they spend time bringing together technical folks working on interesting projects, and helping get things off the ground. They lead investments from a company's first round through Series A and support founders all the way until IPO. They invest into:

• Enlitic (2014) is a pioneer in DL that leverages its proprietary algorithms to quickly and accurately improve healthcare diagnosis. With a platform developed by renowned data scientists, ML practitioners and medical experts, Enlitic is able to analyze a wide variety of healthcare data sources, including billions of clinical cases, to improve diagnostic accuracy, speed and patient outcomes, as well as accelerate pharmaceutical research and drug trials.
• PicnicHealth (2014) is making medical records easy to access and using data to power the next frontier of medical research.
• Recursion (2013) is a clinical-stage biotechnology company decoding biology by integrating technological innovations across biology, chemistry, automation, machine learning and engineering to industrialize drug discovery. For more about Recursion’s pipeline: https://marinatalamanou.substack.com/p/ai-powered-drug-discovery-update-f8e
• InterVenn (2016) is building a unique powerful liquid-biopsy solution by leveraging the rich diversity of protein glycosylation. They offer the GlycoKnow Colon, a blood-based laboratory-developed test designed to assess the presence of adenomas with high-grade dysplasia or colorectal cancer by harnessing the power of the immune system. They also offer an InterVenn’s biomarker discovery platform, GlycoVision?, that decodes a previously untapped layer of biology: the glycoproteome. Critical insights into cellular and protein function are achieved through the characterization of glycoproteins.?
• Notable Labs (2014) is a translationally focused drug development company that uses a clinically validated, automated compound sensitivity platform to identify and advance novel therapeutic candidates to dramatically reduce the cost and time of the traditional drug development process. Through their proprietary Predictive Precision Medicines Platform (“PPMP”), Notable bio-simulates a cancer treatment and predicts whether or not a patient is likely to respond to that specific therapeutic.

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

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WhiteLab Genomics

At the interface between gene and cell therapy companies, we have the French AI biotech company WhiteLab Genomics (SaaS/Cloud), that provides to the gene and cell therapy companies predictive software simulations to facilitate the design of gene and cell therapies. The company was founded in 2019 by David Del Bourgo, MBA—a former engineer at General Electric Healthcare—and Julien Cottineau, PhD—a geneticist who trained at the Institut Imagine in France—and has a proprietary platform that leverages graph knowledge technology and ML to help scientists discover and design new gene, RNA and cell therapies. The platform offers: target discovery (target expression, profiling, epigenetic signatures identification, protein structure and interaction simulations, cellular biomarker screening), payload design (sequence design, promoter/enhancer choice, chimeric construction, transgene expression modulation) and vector design (viral capsid & envelope design, transduction optimisation, biodistribution prediction, immunoreactivity modulation).

On October 31, 2023, WhiteLab Genomics announced that Laurent van Lerberghe—the former Chief Strategy Officer at Sanofi—joined its Board of Directors. This appointment marked a significant milestone as the company pursues its mission of advancing genomic medicine and healthcare innovation.

In 2023, Sanofi (EPA: SAN), WhiteLab Genomics, the TaRGeT Laboratory at Nantes University and Institut Imagine launched the WIDGeT consortium (Viral Vector Intelligent Design for Gene Therapy) to make France a global leader in gene therapy by accelerating the development of gene therapies using viral vectors derived from adeno-associated viruses (AAV) for the treatment of age-related macular degeneration and hereditary podocytopathies (kidney diseases), leveraging the potential of AI.

?? In February 2024, WhiteLab Genomics and Siren Biotechnology—the innovator of universal AAV immuno-gene therapy for cancer—announced a strategic partnership to develop an AI-powered indication discovery platform for AAV immuno-gene therapies for cancer. This collaboration will leverage WhiteLab Genomics’ next generation AI platform and expertise to identify additional target indications for Siren’s immuno-gene therapies, driving their joint vision to discover effective treatments for cancers.?

?? On April 29, 2024, WhiteLab Genomics, the Vision Institute—an international research center on ophthalmic diseases—and ADLIN Science—which develops a decentralized digital research environment—have entered into a strategic partnership and launched GEAR (Evaluation of Adeno-Associated Virus Vector Gene Therapy for the Retina). The GEAR partnership aims at overcoming barriers and knowledge gaps in retinal dystrophies such as limited access, physical barriers and lack of knowledge of receptors present on retinal cells. GEAR will start with a budget of €4M from BPI France and funds from the ?le-de-France region as part of the regional I-demo call for projects of the France 2030 plan.

?? On May 6, 2024, WhiteLab Genomics announced its US presence by joining Bayer’s Life Science incubator in Cambridge, MA to leverage Bayer’s (ETR: BAYN) expertise in order to accelerate drug development timelines and mitigate risks through AI-powered genomic analysis, marking a significant step in their mission to deliver life-saving therapies to the market.

WhiteLab Genomics has won numerous awards and is part of French Tech 2030. It was selected in Station F first Future 40 and is currently supported by Future4care incubator created by Capgemini, Generali, Orange and Sanofi. It is also a member of the prestigious American accelerator Y-Combinator. On September 13, 2022, Whitelab Genomics?Raised $10M in Series A?Funding from Debiopharm Innovation Fund, the strategic investment arm of Swiss biopharmaceutical company Debiopharm, and Omnes Capital.

Fund, the strategic investment arm of Swiss biopharmaceutical company Debiopharm, and Omnes Capital.

For more about Cell and Gene Therapy and AI:

AI Tools for Cell and Gene Therapy

Read full story

AI Tools for Cell and Gene Therapy (2nd part)

Read full story

Sinopia Biosciences Inc

Sinopia Biosciences founded in 2011 in California is enabling the promise of data-driven drug discovery (D4) by applying high-throughput multi-omics data, ML and network analyses and disease models (genome engineered in vitro models and relevant in vivo models). The company is focused on metabolomics. Combining pioneering advances in metabolomics technologies and computational data analysis is enabling Sinopia to study diseases and compounds at an unprecedented level of biomolecular detail using signals (i.e. metabolites) that most closely relate to cellular functions. These advances in multi-omics data generation and ML analysis led to their platform LEADSTM (LEarn And DiScover) that combines high-throughput screening, multi-omics data, AI/ML and network analyses to rapidly identify novel targets and mechanisms.

On April 19, 2023, Sinopia announced that it has selected SB-0110 (a novel proprietary small molecule) after extensive preclinical studies as its lead clinical candidate for Parkinson’s disease and levodopa-induced dyskinesia.

• SB-0110 is a novel, proprietary small molecule with a unique mechanism of action. In multiple preclinica studies, SB-0110 has demonstrated a unique and potentially transformative pharmacology for treating both the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and also the complications of levodopa, (i.e., levodopa-induced dyskinesia). Further, SB-0110 has demonstrated potential for cognitive enhancing effects in non-human primate models of Parkinson’s disease, an area of high unmet need with no approved treatments

?? On May 30, 2024, Sinopia Biosciences announced that it has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) to advance its computational drug discovery LEADS? platform and explore applications in oncology and immunology.

?? On September 12, 2024, Sinopia was awarded a Phase II SBIR grant, totaling $2.2M, from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research to advance its oral mucositis program to lead discovery and optimization.

Sinopia Biosciences has raised $14.4M and the co-founders are Aarash Bordbar and Bernhard Palsson.

Cure 51

Cure51 (France) is building the first global clinical and molecular database of cancer survivors to discover the biological features that made them "outliers." The aim is to pioneer the creation of the world's first global clinical and molecular database of cancer survivors, by rewriting the narrative of cancer. Rather than focusing on the disease mechanisms, Cure51 studies those individuals who defy statistics and miraculously survive the most aggressive forms of cancer, including metastatic stage pancreatic cancer and glioblastoma.

?? On March 20, 2024, Cure51 announced that it had successfully raised €15M in a seed funding round led by Sofinnova Partners. Other investors included: Hitachi Ventures GmbH, Life Extension Ventures, Xavier Niel, and Olivier Pomel, CEO, and co-founder of Datadog.

Cure51 was founded in March 2022 by Nicolas Wolikow and Simon Istolainen, with input and support from Okwin co-founder Thomas Clozel, alongside seasoned entrepreneurs and five world-renowned oncology centers: Gustave Roussy Institute (IGR, Paris - France), Leon Bérard Center (CLB, Lyon - France), Charité Universit?tsmedizin (Berlin - Germany), Milan - Italy), the Instituto Europeo di Oncologia (IEO - Milan, Italy) and Vall d'Hebron (VHIO, Barcelona - Spain).

With its Scopus AI search now offered to Scopus customers, Elsevier is stressing its emphasis on responsible use of artificial intelligence.

Owkin Inc

Owkin (2016) is a French-American full-stack AI biotech that identifies novel treatments, optimizes clinical trials and develops diagnostics using histology slides and omics. Owkin is offering solutions for Multimodal patient data, Subgroup discovery, AI drug discovery (BiomarkerPLUS, TargetMATCH and DrugMATCH), AI drug development and AI diagnostics:

• Abstra hosts a metadata catalog to enable researchers and data scientists to discover collaborators and datasets, enhancing and expediting AI biomedical research.
• Substra is a ready-to-use, open source federated learning (FL) software developed by Owkin, now hosted by the Linux Foundation for AI and Data, that enables the training and validation of ML models on distributed datasets.
• MOSAIC is a landmark research project to create a multimodal dataset with spatial transcriptomes from 7,000 patients in 7 cancer types. This is the largest spatial omics atlas to date.
• MSIntuit? CRC is a CE-marked AI diagnostic that provides a prescreen approach with digital pathology. MSIntuit is used for Microsatellite instability (MSI), genomic biomarker that plays an important role in the treatment of colorectal tumors (CRC) patients, from H&E WSI, and when performed the first successful blind validation confirmed its robustness for clinical applications.
• RlapsRisk? BC is an AI diagnostic to help pathologists and oncologists determine the right treatment pathway for early breast cancer patients. RlapsRisk BC assesses the risk of distant relapse at 5 years of ER+/HER2- early invasive Breast Cancer patients, post surgery, from HES (hematoxylin-eosin-safran)-stained whole slide images (WSI) and clinical data.

?? On February 08, 2024, Owkin announced that they are working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to transform drug discovery, de-risk and accelerate clinical trials and develop AI diagnostics. More specifically, Owkin selected AWS as its primary cloud provider to develop generative AI applications and accelerate drug discovery and development. The company will leverage AWS’s scalable storage options, enhanced data security measures and robust computing capabilities to empower scientists and researchers to access, analyze, and manage vast amounts of data efficiently and securely in the cloud (TechBio Unicorn Owkin Teams Up with AWS to Advance Generative AI for Precision Medicine). ?? On May 23, 2024, Owkin unveiled an innovative drug pipeline in oncology and immunology following an exclusive global licensing agreement with Idorsia (SIX: IDIA) to develop and commercialize OKN4395, a clinic-ready best-in-class dual inhibitor of prostanoid receptors EP2 and EP4 (Owkin Unveils AI-Driven Oncology and Immunology Pipeline, In-Licenses Best-in-Class Asset OKN4395).

Owkin launched on ?? February 20, 2024 Bioptimus which is a startup developing a large-language model (LLM), in order to build the first universal AI foundation model for biology to fuel breakthrough discoveries and accelerate innovations in biomedicine and beyond. The French startup was launched with a seed funding of $35M, led by Sofinnova Partners, with Bpifrance Large Venture, and additional funding from top global technology VCs. The world-class team at Bioptimus, led by Professor Jean-Philippe Vert, brings together Google DeepMind alumni and Owkin experts.

In 2021 Sanofi (EPA: SAN) inked a $270M cancer AI deal with Owkin, in order to utilize Owkin’s AI-driven platform for optimization of its clinical trial recruitment processes. In 2022, Sanofi’s Global Head of Partnering Alban de La Sablière headed to Owkin as CBO (Chief Business Officer), and all these after Owkin secured $80M from Bristol Myers Squibb (GILD).

• ?? On March 22 2024, Owkin, announced the expansion of their collaboration with Sanofi to include immunology (Owkin Expands Collaboration with Sanofi).

?? On July 03, 2024, Owkin announced its expansion into the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) following partnerships with nine of the top centers in the region, including Charité – Universit?tsmedizin Berlin, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), Universit?tsspital Basel, Technische Universit?t München (TUM), Uniklinikum Erlangen, Universit?tsklinikum Leipzig, Inselspital Bern, Universit?tsklinik Mannheim-Heidelberg and Medizinische Universit?t Wien (Owkin, an AI-Biotech Unicorn, Brings Its Cutting-Edge AI to Germany, Austria and Switzerland to Accelerate Research).

Owkin is founder-led by Thomas Clozel, MD, Oncologist, and Gilles Wainrib, PhD, Professor of Machine Learning, is trusted by 8 biopharmas with strategic deals with Sanofi and BMS, is first in class in AI diagnostics and is well-funded with million dollars (a total of $304.1M) raised from leading biopharma companies (Sanofi & BMS) and venture funds (Fidelity, Google Ventures & BPI, among others).

Parallel Bio (Parallel Biosystems, Inc)

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.

?? On June 26, 2024, Parallel Bio announced that Ari Gesher has joined as the first head of technology to oversee technical infrastructure and the development of advanced AI and robotics infrastructure to rapidly scale its immune organoid platform for drug discovery (Parallel Bio Appoints Deep Tech Innovator Ari Gesher as Head of Technology). Gesher joins from Insight M (formerly known as Kairos Aerospace), most recently as chief technology officer, where he spent more than seven years developing and growing its wide-area aerial methane detection technology used to manage industrial emissions of the greenhouse gas. Before that, he spent 10 years at Palantir in various engineering and outreach roles, joining in 2006 as one of the first software engineers at the big data software company.

Parallel Bio has raised a total of $4.6M in funding over two rounds.

PipeBio Aps

PipeBio, founded in 2020 in Denmark, is a cloud-based bioinformatics platform for biologics discovery, allowing wet lab scientists to easily analyze antibody and peptide sequences. They offer Antibody Discovery and Antibody Engineering, and they have the following tools for sequence analysis: Sequence storage and powerful querying, Configure workflows and automation by API and a Secure cloud platform.

Founded by Jannick Bendtsen and Owen Bodley, PipeBio now has an ambitious team behind that comes from different backgrounds, ranging from wet-lab biologists to computer engineers, with both academic and industrial experience.

?? In April 2024, they presented a study analyzing some single cell Next-generation sequencing (NGS) data and multi-target cross-reactivity assay data from the Beacon B-cell workflow in PipeBio (Bruker Cellular Analysis Beacon? Data in PipeBio Software). They demonstrated that the Beacon system can efficiently recover high quality variable heavy and light chain sequences from cells that have been pre-screened for functional binding. Furthermore, the sequence and assay data can be brought together and analyzed in tandem in the easy-to-use PipeBio platform. The Beacon Optofluidic System from Bruker Cellular Analysis (BCA; formerly Berkeley Lights) is an exciting technology that enables workflows for single cell analysis and functional characterization.

SanaCurrents, LLC is a research & analytics firm tracking market-moving catalysts of biopharmaceutical and medical technology stocks for the investment community.

The company offers its independent research services on a subscription basis, publishing reports on approximately 50 catalyst events every year.

Turbine AI (Turbine Simulated Cell Technologies Ltd)

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 its 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 (ETR: BAYN), AstraZeneca (LON: AZN), Ginkgo Bioworks (NYSE: DNA) and Ono (TYO: 4528).

• ?? On September 12, 2024, Turbine announced that Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd (Osaka, Japan) has selected multiple targets identified using Turbine’s in silico Simulated Cell? platform for further development. Turbine will now lead in vitro validation of the identified targets in one of Ono’s priority cancer biology domains, in consultation with Ono (Turbine Achieves Key Milestone in Collaboration with Ono Pharmaceutical).
• Additionally, they have three internal programs (Genome instability & mutation, Sustaining proliferative signaling, Deregulating cellular metabolism), a novel kinase program NEK1 in collaboration with Harmonic Discovery, a CDC7 program in collaboration with Cancer Research Horizons (as of February 3, 2023), three programs with Bayer, two programs with AstraZeneca and two more programs with biotech/pharma partners.

The London based Budapest University spinout Turbine AI raised a total $36.79M. Investors of Turbine include Accenture Ventures, MassMutual Ventures, Delin Ventures, XTX Ventures, Accel and 12 more.

IridescentBio: a cloud computational scientist on-demand

IridescentBio (The Netherlands) blends physics and chemistry based predictive modeling with rigorous analytics for antibody hit screening, AI training and antibody patent analysis. Their platform—that leverages Amazon Web Services (AWS) to predict antibody properties at scale—provides insights into binding affinity, target specificity and aggregation risks of antibodies. A typical run generates around 100,000 data points per antibody, within about one hour of compute time in the cloud. Intuitive reports are also generated to guide top-level interpretation of the data, helping biotech professionals to make more informed decisions in their antibody R&D pipelines.

IridescentBio outputs deep data within the space of antibody formulation parameters like pH, temperature, and salt and other excipient concentration. A typical run generates around 100,000 data points per antibody, within about one hour of compute time in the cloud. All AI-ready. Intuitive reports are also generated to guide top-level interpretation of the data, helping biotech professionals to make more informed decisions in their antibody R&D pipelines.

In 2023, Iridescent Bio partnered with The Lens to bring protein patents to life with AI and computational modeling. The Lens—is the flagship project of the social enterprise Cambia—that seeks to source, merge and link diverse open knowledge sets (including scholarly works and patents) to inform discovery, analysis, decision making and partnering on a human-centered user experience built on an open web platform, Lens.org, with toolkits designed to optimize institutional effectiveness in problem solving.

• During this collaboration, Iridescent Bio will provide users an augmented view of patented proteins, allowing them to explore the "third dimension" of chemical and physical data that reside behind the printed words in the patent literature. Basically, they mine the IP and patent space of the therapeutic antibodies to enable a better understanding of these biomolecules as potential therapeutics. The user can input a patent number and then receive a report with chemical properties and a 3D visualization of each protein sequence—all created with AI and computational modeling. It’s a bit like a cloud computational scientist on-demand, with a one-hour turn-around time and no expertise required.

The company was co-founded by Aart Bijkerk (also Investor Liaison at We Love SaaS), Johannes (Hans) Fraaije (also Chief Science Advisor at Iridescent) and by Nicholas B. Tito, PhD that is also the Chief Scientific Officer. Nicholas is also the founder of Vanson Viridis—a scientific consultancy and predictive modeling for chemical, formulation and material R&D—and he was the Director of Science at RheoCube, a virtual lab for R&D departments to help scientists predict the physical behavior of complex fluids.

In December 2023, IridescentBio announced that they had closed a pre-seed investment round (Seed $ 377.8K), led by UNIIQ - Finance for the Future and Libertatis Ergo Holding BV.

Peptone Ltd

Peptone—founded in 2018 and born out of 30 years of academic research at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, ETH Zurich and Groningen—is a translational biophysics company focused on drugging Intrinsically Disordered Proteins. The focal point of their protein therapeutics platform (Oppenheimer) is an intersection of physics, molecular biology and next generation supercomputing.

The proteins in our cells are folded into three-dimensional shapes that enable them to function properly and for some proteins these structures are clearly defined. However, around half the proteins in our cells have significant components with no fixed structure. These intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) in proteins can have broad functions and implications across a wide range of therapeutic areas. These IDRs, when dysregulated, can induce the formation of toxic multimers via enhanced aggregation, can disrupt protein-protein interactions mediated through disorder contacts or can alter biomolecular condensates and microenvironments essential to correct cell function.

Many intrinsically disordered proteins (Troponin T, Alpha-synuclein, p53) are directly implicated in human pathologies and are very difficult to target with drugs. For this reason, proprietary NMR experiments (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy) coupled with HDX-MS (Hydrogen deuterium exchange mass spectrometry) as well as other experiments are all used to generate ambiguous restraints for modeling of proteins ensembles of Intrinsically Disordered Protein targets.

Then Peptone’s proprietary Molecular Dynamics engine utilizes the experimental restraints to simulate non-canonical behavior of the disordered targets and identify the most plausible drugging sites. Their ML methods generate compact but diverse libraries of high quality protein binders against the best ranking spatial disordered epitopes. Finally, their advanced biophysical laboratory performs lead selection and end to end testing. A data driven decision is made if the binder selection process requires more iterations.

?? On June 19, 2024, Deep-learning protein sequence models have shown outstanding performance at de novo protein design and variant effect prediction (Improving Inverse Folding models at Protein Stability Prediction without additional Training or Data). By introducing a second term derived from the models themselves, at Peptone they substantially improved performance without further training or additional experimental data. This term aligns outputs for the task of stability prediction.

• On a task to predict variants that increase protein stability, the absolute success probabilities of ProteinMPNN and ESMif are improved by 11% and 5%, respectively.

Peptone—selected as one of Nature Biotechnology’s top academic spinouts in 2023—has raised a total of $42.4M in funding over 2 rounds.

For more:

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

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. Illumina Ventures is now looking to raise $300M for its third fund, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

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. On January 12, 2024, Illumina Ventures launched a refreshed genomics startup accelerator program. The program is currently taking applications for early-stage genomics startups, from company formation through series A financing.

Illumina Ventures invests into:

• ?? Syntax Bio is a preclinical-stage biotech company overcoming the longstanding challenges in stem cell-derived therapies by directly controlling and accelerating cell differentiation. Their Cellgorithm technology provides control over the complex developmental biology needed to manufacture stem cell-derived cell therapies.?Cellgorithm mimics the human developmental processes at the epigenetic level, using a modified CRISPR system to regulate endogenous genes in an automatic and temporally controlled manner.
• ?? Tagomics is harnessing the power of multi-omics to accelerate disease understanding and diagnosis. Tagomics' proprietary multi-omic platform unlocks disease-associated biomarkers from a range of biological sources including genetic, epigenetic and fragmentomic features. In combination with their advanced bioinformatic and ML approaches their platform provides unique biological insights and offers a step change in genomics-based disease profiling and diagnosis
• ?? 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. Ribometrix has risen to the challenge of addressing “undruggable” proteins by preventing the translation of their mRNAs, leading to a reduction of the target disease-causing protein. Their platform modulates RNA biology for therapeutic effect via independent yet related strategies to develop small molecule therapeutics: direct targeting of complex RNA structures, targeting of RNA/RNA-binding protein interactions and development of RNA degraders. Among their partners you can find Genentech and Vertex.
• ?? 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.
• ??? Pattern Bioscience?is a healthtech company that focuses on diagnostics related to antibiotic resistance. They are offering a proprietary single-cell analysis technology that shortens the test time by “zooming in” and measuring the live response of each pathogenic cell directly, bypassing the need for time-consuming culture steps. The advances of AI and DL have enabled them to recast assay development as a software problem. In particular, DL will observe how living cells actually respond, all at a scale never before possible, while single-cell analysis will produce millions of measurements per run. Then phenotypic pattern recognition will cover every resistance mechanism: known, unknown, existing, emerging, simple, complex, genetic, or epigenetic.
• ?? Iambic Therapeutics (formerly known as Entos) combines physics and AI to create a differentiated drug discovery platform that achieves a step-change in the speed and success rate for delivering best-in-class and first-in-class development candidates 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: a generative molecular design tool. The development of Iambic’s suite of AI-driven drug discovery platforms, including NeuralPLexer and ProPANE, was facilitated in part through a multi-year research collaboration with NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) (Iambic and NVIDIA: Using AI to chart a faster course for drug discovery).
• On June 18, 2024, Iambic closed an oversubscribed $50M extension to its Series B financing, which was led by new investors Mubadala Capital and Exor Ventures, with participation from Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), and existing investors Abingworth, Illumina Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, Coatue, and Tao Capital Partners. The extension adds to an oversubscribed $100M Series B that closed in October and was co-led by Ascenta Capital and Abingworth and joined by NVIDIA and others.

Iktos

Iktos?(Paris, Ile-de-France, France, 2016) is specialized in the development of AI solutions applied to chemical research, more specifically medicinal chemistry and new drug design.?Iktos released?Makya, its generative AI-driven ligand and structure-based?de novo?design software for chemical space exploration and multi-parametric optimization (MPO) of lead compounds, available either as a SaaS platform or for implementation on customer premises or in the customer’s Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). Makya’s user-friendly interface enables it to be used by medicinal or computational chemists and can also be operated as a Python package through a Jupyter notebook interface. Iktos?also released?Spaya, an AI-based retrosynthesis platform and Spaya API, a high throughput synthetic accessibility scoring tool for virtual molecule libraries

Iktos has collaborations with: Merck KGaA, Darmstadt (ETR: MRK) (2020), Kadmon (a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company based in USA, May 2021), UCB (EBR: UCB) (a global biopharma company focusing on neurology and immunology, May 2021), Astrogen (a clinical and research-oriented biotech company in S.Korea focused in developing innovative new drugs for neurological diseases, January 2022), Ono Pharmaceuticals Co from Japan, with a focus on oncology, immunology and neurology research (March 2022), Teijin Pharma based in Japan (April 2022), Sygnature Discovery (May 2022), Zealand Pharma A/S (OTCMKTS: ZLDPF) (a biotechnology company focused on the discovery and development of peptide-based medicines, June 2022),?Galapagos (NASDAQ: GLPG) (formerly known as Galapagos Genomics is leading Belgian global biopharmaceutical company, June 2022), Kissei Pharmaceutical Co (TYO: 4547) (a Japanese pharmaceutical company specialized in the field of urology, kidney-dialysis and unmet medical needs, July 2023), Curreio (a Japanese company specializing in structural analysis of biomolecules using cryo-electron microscopy) and Bayer’s Crop Science (a Bayer division with its industry-leading R&D pipeline and portfolio of seeds & traits, crop protection and digital farming solutions, December 2023).

Moreover, on March 05, 2024 Elsevier and Iktos partnered to deliver an AI-driven synthetic chemistry platform for drug discovery. By combining the world’s largest chemistry database, Reaxys from Elsevier, with cutting-edge AI from Iktos, the new platform will enable pharmaceutical companies to identify pre-clinical drug candidates faster. Finally, on July 08, 2024 Iktos acquired Synsight, a life sciences technology company specializing in protein-protein and RNA-protein interactions-targeted drug discovery. Synsight is a deep tech company developing a screening technology that enables the development of effective first-in-class drug candidates for RNA targeting, based on a discovery platform of AI and cell imaging. The French Synsight developed the Microtubule Bench technology (MT bench?), from a research tool to an industrialized cell testing to screen molecules by microscopy, making possible to identify and quantify the modulations of small molecules on proteins and nucleic acids with convergence of High-Content.

On March 9, 2023, Iktos announced the closing of a €15.5M Series A financing to expand its existing SaaS software and to launch Iktos Robotics: a unique drug discovery platform which combines AI and automation of chemical synthesis. The funding round was co-led by new investors M Ventures and?Debiopharm Innovation Fund with participation from Omnes Capital (Iktos raises €15.5m Series A round to expand its artificial intelligence-based drug discovery technologies and solutions).

Altris AI

Altris.AI is an emerging eye AI imaging ??company applying computer vision and DL algorithms to build innovative ophthalmology diagnosis and real-time support, for automatic, structural and quantitative analysis, as well as detection of retinal diseases on Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) scans.

Founded by Maria Znamenska—the owner of an ophthalmic clinic in Kyiv, Ukraine and a PhD in Ophthalmology—and Andrey Kuropyatnyk—an MBA?and IT consultant in Greater Málaga Metropolitan Area in Spain—Altris AI improves the diagnostic process in ophthalmology by automating the detection of more than 70+ pathologies on OCT images utilizing AI. The system is based on the biggest dataset of clinical cases.

Their first prototype for the detection of two pathological conditions and a normal retina was developed in November 2017. In April 2018, Altris.AI was among the winners of the Global New Venture Challenge, a global startup competition of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. In April 2018, the company?Altris Inc. was incorporated, and is now headquartered in the USA with R&D centers located in Kyiv, Ukraine and Malaga, Spain.

In May 2019,?the company signed the first partnership agreement with Huvitz Corporation, a South Korean ophthalmic equipment manufacturer aiming to develop AI solutions for OCT interpretation. In July 2019, Altris.AI received a CE-mark certificate as medical software for OCT interpretation with AI. In September 2019,?the company released Altris AI, the first commercially available AI solution for OCT interpretation at the EURETINA conference getting positive feedback from the ophthalmology community. In February 2020,?the company signed a partnership agreement with Topcon Healthcare—a manufacturer offering the latest integrated solutions including advanced multimodal imaging, vendor-neutral data management and groundbreaking remote diagnostic technology—and Optopol—the manufacturer of the world's first Spectral Domain OCT.

In May 2020, Altris.AI started R&D activities in OCT structural analysis for early retina neurodegeneration detection (Glaucoma, Multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease). In the first half of 2023, they were featured in the Ophthalmology Times, Eyes on Eyecase, the Eyewire, the Ophthalmologist, and the New Optometrist, and Optometry Today as one of the promising AI startups in the eye care industry.?

In September 2023, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted 510(k) clearance of Altris IMS platform, the company’s image and data management platform.

In February 2024, they added the Early Glaucoma Risk Assessment module, which will be a game changer for the eye care industry.

?? Altris AI and Heidelberg Engineering just announced a new partnership.From now on, AltrisAI platform will be available on AppWay, and all HEYEX 2 users can create AI-powered OCT reports.

Basecamp Research

Basecamp Research (2019, UK) is a biotechnology company that partners with R&D?teams to develop proteins that meet their most challenging requirements in applications as food, pharma and bioremediation. Having sampled from most extreme and extraordinary biomes on the planet, their knowledge graph of natural biodiversity is the most comprehensive and diverse in existence. This data advantage allows them to rapidly develop AI models. The company was founded by Oliver Vince and Glen Gowers. On March 12, 2024, Basecamp Research announced the launch of BaseFold, its new deep learning model?that predicts 3D structures of large, complex proteins?more accurately than?other AI-powered tools, including the industry gold standard, AlphaFold2 (IMPROVING ALPHAFOLD2 PERFORMANCE WITH A GLOBAL METAGENOMIC & BIOLOGICAL DATA SUPPLY CHAIN).

• BaseFold was created by augmenting the AlphaFold2 model, which predicts the 3D structure of a protein based on its amino acid sequence, with BaseGraph. BaseGraph is Basecamp Research's purpose-built foundational dataset for biological AI, collected via access and benefit-sharing partnerships?with over 25 biodiversity-rich countries. Furthermore, Basecamp Research will be working with NVIDIA to optimize and productionize BaseFold for NVIDIA BioNeMo.

On June 18, 2024, Basecamp Research partnered with the Ferruz Laboratory at the Institute of Molecular Biology of Barcelona to unveil ZymCTRL ("enzyme control"). Modeled after large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, ZymCTRL allows users to generate ?? new enzyme sequences simply by inputting an enzyme identification code, specifying the desired activity (Basecamp Research and Ferruz Laboratory Announce ZymCTRL: A Revolutionary AI Tool for Enzyme Design).

• ZymCTRL represents a significant leap forward, offering an end-to-end solution that bypasses the need for a seed sequence, thus providing users with unparalleled control over the design process. This next-generation tool is not only rapid and cost-effective but also capable of creating enzyme sequences with only 30% resemblance to those in its training set, broadening the horizons for novel enzyme development.

For more:

How Basecamp Research Helps Catalog Earth’s Biodiversity

Phil Lorenz, CTO at Basecamp Research, discusses how using AI and biodiversity data allows researchers to advance fields like medicine and environmental conservation with host Noah Kravitz in a AI Podcast episode recorded live at the NVIDIA GTC global AI conference.

Basecamp Research is a member of the NVIDIA Inception program for cutting-edge startups.

Basecamp Research has now raised a total of $30M.

Blackbird VC

Black Bird VC is based in Australia and New Zealand and invests in every type of technology from software to space. They invest in the best startup companies all the way through their journey from idea to beyond IPO. Their portfolio is worth over $7B and includes some of the most successful Aussie and Kiwi startups including Canva, Zoox, SafetyCulture, Culture Amp and Halter. In the TechBio sector they invest into:

• ?? Inventia Life Science (2023, Australia) develops solutions to create advanced cell models and help forward-thinking pioneers in the fields of drug discovery and biomedical research to create human tissue for research and therapy. Their machine (RASTRUM? Instrument) creates advanced cell models which most closely and predictably imitate real human tissue structure and behavior across a range of disease states. This physiological complexity offers an environment in which world-class research and discovery can occur, right in your own lab. In particular, RASTRUM? is drop-on-demand technology that deposits nanoliter droplets of cells and matrix components to build 3D cell models in a way that's rapid, precise and gentle on cells.
• ?? Sahha AI (2021, Australia) offers all the tools you need to collect and analyze health and wearable data so you can build next generation health & fitness apps. You can pull data from wearables and smartphones through integrations with Apple Health, Google Health Connect, including: Android & Google devices, Oura Ring, Samsung, Garmin, Whoop, Peloton, Polar and more.
• ?? Vexev?(2018, Australia) is building the next generation of non-invasive medical imaging and intelligent patient monitoring. They offer solutions for: For Vascular Labs, For Dialysis Providers and For Healthcare Professionals.

Corrdyn

CorrDyn (US, 2015) is a data-driven technology consultancy that enables scalable and affordable growth. At CorrDyn, they have a team of experts in data, engineering and technology who partner with clients to enable innovation, efficiency and scale. They provide strategic planning and implementation that allows for continual improvement on a sustainable budget, with a defined return on investment. More about their capabilities (Data Engineering, Business Intelligence, Enterprise Software, Digital Transformation, ML, Systems Integration, Process Automation and Technology Strategy) here.

Their primary experience is in developing data infrastructure for biotech firms, especially high-throughput data pipelines, low-latency reporting, ML models and ML operations platforms. For example, for a healthcare e-commerce company the CorrDyn team:

• Developed a data pipeline from each SaaS provider and proprietary system to a BigQuery data warehouse, utilizing serverless processing and storage methods to keep infrastructure costs manageable and forecastable.?
• Created complex metadata attribution rules to determine which product category, parent SKU, and child SKU should be associated with each revenue line item, cost line item, and return line item.
• Normalized data into a single source of truth for sales, product expenses, advertising expenses, and returns at the product category, parent SKU, and child SKU levels.?And

• Built an automated business intelligence suite in Looker to provide visibility into sales, marketing, and operations to all decision-makers.

Data in Biotech by CorrDyn?is a fortnightly podcast exploring how companies leverage data to drive innovation in life sciences (guests: Cody Schiffer, Vera Mucaj, Harry Rickerby, Pradeep Ravindra and many more).

Tierra Biosciences

Tierra Biosciences (2015, US) is a synthetic biology company that accelerates the pace of discovery and enables the next generation of bio-based materials, with its AI-driven Tierra Protein Platform, that couples high-throughput protein manufacturing with the simplicity of e-commerce to make ordering custom proteins easier than ever before.

Advances in DNA synthesis, DNA sequencing and de novo protein design have made exploration of diverse sets of sequences easier. But the challenge has now moved to protein synthesis and the solution is the cell-free expression Tierra Protein Platform, where you can:

• Input your digital protein sequences and get AI-driven computational insights into synthesis profiles and risks.
• Then receive physical, testable proteins that have gone through extensive experimental validation and QA/QC. All through a single digital portal.
• Tierra’s proprietary cell-free expression technology utilizes the components of a living cell, but not the cell itself, since engineering and manipulating cells can be a challenge.?Then by combining automation, computational analysis and high-throughput cell-free expression, is synthesizing proteins?from diverse sources.
• By providing high throughput rapid protein synthesis from digital protein sequences, Tierra allows you to move quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively to your downstream assays to screen and identify hits.
• Finally, you can get your custom, purified μg- and mg-scale proteins in as little as 3 weeks.

Tierra’s technology was originally developed at Caltech. Co-founders are Zachary Sun and George Church, one of the living legends of modern genetics.

With applications in biopharma (Antibody engineering, Difficult-to-express proteins and Drug Targets) and synthetic biology (Computationally designed proteins en masse, Protein engineering, Toxic Proteins, Pathway and metabolic engineering and Metagenomic Screening), Tierra Biosciences raised in March 2024 a $11.4M series A to expand its designer protein-to-order platform.

For more:

TechBio News: Un-locking Data to Transform Biology (II)

Trends on TechBio ?: BioPhy, Nucleai, Flagship Pioneering, Codon Capital LLC, Profluent and Backed VC