Antiverse, a biotech company based in Wales, has secured a $9.3m (£7m) Series A investment in support of its AI-designed therapeutic antibody technology.
The Cardiff-based company was launched to tackle the healthcare challenge of treating diseases with supposedly ‘undruggable’ molecular targets.
Antiverse has developed an AI-led computational system that focuses on developing antibodies against these targets.
“Many biologically important targets have remained difficult to drug using conventional antibody discovery methods,” said the company’s co-founder and chief executive Murat Tunaboylu.
Tunaboylu said that with the new funds secured, the company can scale its generative antibody design platform and expand its strategic collaborations with partners including the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
The investment was led by Soulmates Ventures and included participation from Innovation Investment Capital, DOMiNO Ventures, DBW, Kadmos Capital and i&i Biotech Fund.
“Antiverse is tackling one of the most technically demanding problems in drug discovery. The team’s ability to reduce the development time for de novo therapeutic-grade antibodies in a defined domain to under four months is a significant scientific and operational achievement,” said Soulmates Ventures managing partner Michal Sikyta.
“This capability, combined with the AI-driven design and in-house labs, positions Antiverse on track to become a global leader and the go-to developer of antibody therapies for the most elusive disease targets in medicine”.