Antiverse Ltd (Antiverse), a biotechnology company developing a computational antibody drug discovery platform, has closed a $3 million investment round that will enable further development of its AI-driven drug discovery platform.
The $3 million investment came from new investors InnoSpark, AngelHub, Kadmos Capital and Tomorrow Scale, as well as existing investors, Tensor Ventures, Deep Science Ventures, Ed Parkinson and the Development Bank of Wales.
Cardiff-based Antiverse has also confirmed the successful identification of eight antibodies with therapeutic potential for human GPCRs. The antibodies were identified using Antiverse’s proprietary computational antibody drug discovery platform, which uses machine learning to model antibody-antigen interactions and design de novo antibodies.
GPCRs are a class of cell membrane receptors that play a crucial role in various physiological processes. Due to their link to several pathologies and diseases and the fact that approximately half of all prescription drugs target the GPCR family, they are attractive targets for drug discovery campaigns. Diseases linked to GPCRs include diabetes, cardiovascular and psychiatric disorders.
Murat Tunaboylu, co-founder and CEO of Antiverse, said: “This is the most comprehensive validation of our platform thus far. While identifying antibodies to GPCRs has traditionally been a complex and time-intensive process requiring expensive specialist technology and training, we have demonstrated that Antiverse’s drug discovery platform can achieve this in a fraction of the time and cost. GPCRs are commercially interesting targets associated with various indications, and these antibodies offer a path to first in vivo results and can potentially be our first assets. I would like to thank our investors; this funding will enable us to continue to develop these assets in-house with our academic collaborators.”
Peter Pack, antibody engineer and NED at Antiverse, added: “Antiverse’s AI-powered methods to generate nanomolar binders against “difficult” antigens such as GPCRs in silico is a gamechanger in the antibody discovery industry, the most important innovation since the invention of phage display. We will see large savings in cost and time in the discovery and development of antibodies.”
Matt Fates, a board member at Antiverse and partner at InnoSpark commented: “We see tremendous potential in the Antiverse platform. Their combination of AI-driven antibody design with proprietary laboratory validation shows great promise in targeting historically challenging GPCRs linked to cancer and a wide variety of other conditions. We congratulate the team on their achievement in the pursuit of bringing new treatments to patients."
Dr Mark Bowman, Venture Fund Manager with the Development Bank added: “Our continued support for Antiverse with this round of follow-on funding reflects our belief in the company’s potential to change people's lives. Using next generation sequencing, this exciting technology is being developed to enable the discovery of biologics for difficult-to-drug targets associated with cancer, heart, and lung diseases. This is innovation at its very best.”
