Ashwin Nandakumar and Ashwin Jainarayanan were PhD students in neighboring departments at Oxford University, but didn't know each other. Nandakumar, who was studying oncology, came across an interesting dataset on prostate cancer one day and needed help sequencing it.
“I reached out to a few friends and asked them to help me analyze this data,” Nandakumar says. “They said, 'There's another guy named Ashwin, why don't you get in touch with him?'”
The two Ashwins hit it off immediately, and soon after they met, Ashwin began working in the lab of Jainarayanan's supervisor, Michael Dustin, a professor of molecular immunology.
As Nandakumar and Jainarayanan prepared to graduate, they initially planned to pursue jobs at big pharmaceutical companies, but they were also fascinated by Dustin's research. “Mike had discovered a whole new feature of the immune system that people didn't know existed,” Nandakumar says.
Nandakumar and Jainarayanan decided to explore the idea of turning their research into a company, and they were introduced to Y Combinator bio partner Surbhi Sarna, who persuaded the two Ashwins to apply to the prestigious accelerator.
“That conversation changed our lives,” Nandakumar said. “We decided not to join big pharma. We were going to build our own big pharma.”
Nandakumar, Jainarayanan and Dustin founded Granza Bio, a biotech startup working on new approaches to deliver immunotherapies and other “attack particles” to different parts of the body. The two, Ashwin and I, were part of YC’s Winter 24 batch.
Glanza's approach has attracted a lot of interest from investors. “Our original plan was to raise $2.5 million to do some really important experiments,” Nandakumar says. “We were [a] We hit that target on Wednesday and we hit that target on Friday.”
As investors came forward to fund Granza, the Ashwins decided to raise more capital so they could expand their biotech research beyond the early lab stage.
On Wednesday, Granza Bio announced it had raised a $7.14 million seed round led by Felicis and Refactor, with participation from Y Combinator.
Glanza Bio is a perfect fit for Felicis' theory, which is that activating the body's immune system can treat cancer and other autoimmune diseases, Felicis deal partner Tobi Coker told TechCrunch. “The research in Dustin's lab is completely novel,” Coker said, adding that Glanza's approach to delivering therapeutics throughout organ systems could have broad applications in oncology and treating autoimmune diseases.
Felicis is best known as an early investor in technology companies such as Notion, Camba, Adyen, Cruise, Flexport and Shopify, but the 18-year-old venture firm is no stranger to the biotech investing world. Coker said about 10% to 15% of the firm's capital is invested in biology-focused startups. Felicis' best-known life sciences companies include Gingo Bioworks and Recursion Pharmaceuticals, both of which are now publicly traded.
“We think we have an eye for new technology paradigms and potential platform companies,” Coker said. (In biotech, platform companies focus on creating foundational tools that can be used to develop a range of therapeutics.)
Felicis and Granza Bio's other investors are betting that the startup's therapeutic cargo delivery mechanism could eventually help develop a range of new medicines.