The first thing Promise Bio CEO Ronel Veksler wants you to know about the biotech company he co-founded is that it's not just another AI drug discovery company. Instead, he's bringing precision medicine to autoimmune diseases.
Tel Aviv-based Promise Bio has developed a cloud-based AI platform that can detect various post-translational modifications (PTMs) of proteins from a single blood sample. Before Promise's technology, identifying one of these 200 protein modifications required a separate test. These PTMs are key to the diagnosis and treatment of diseases such as autoimmune diseases.
“It's very substantial, it's like going from a black and white TV to seeing color,” Veksler told TechCrunch. “You're looking at the same protein in completely different ways.”
A simple way to examine these protein modifications could unlock the potential for precision medicine for autoimmune diseases, just as advances in genomics have enabled precision treatment for cancer patients. Yes, Bexler said.
“When I practiced medicine and encountered people with autoimmune diseases, they were in constant competition to find the best medicine for them,” said Bexler. . “It's a lot of trial and error, but now with computational power it just doesn't make sense.”
Veksler described the path to Promise Bio as several pieces falling into place. After earning my medical degree and working as a physician for several years, I completed my PhD at the intersection of medicine and engineering before the pandemic. After practicing as a physician and working at a friend's startup company, C2i Genomics, he wanted to do something related to software, precision medicine, and autoimmune diseases.
His wife, Gal Neumann Wechsler, a partner at VC Lionbird, said he came home one day in 2021 and met Yifat Merbru, a senior scientist at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science, who was trying to spin out computational biology. I told you. The technology she was working on.
Vexler said this scenario “fits perfectly.” Promise Bio was officially founded in January 2023 with co-founder and CTO Assaf Kacen and has been operating in secrecy ever since. The company already has partnerships with several large hospitals in the United States and Israel, as well as pharmaceutical companies such as AstraZeneca and Pfizer.
Promise Bio is currently emerging from stealth with a previously undisclosed $8.3 million seed round that closed in April 2023. The majority of the capital came from strategic investors AstraZeneca and Pfizer, as well as lead investor Awz Ventures. The company is using the funding to hire for its team and build a database of PTM data points it is collecting from its tests for use in future research and development.
Roni Alsheich, general partner at Awz Ventures, told TechCrunch that he's very bullish on the Promise Bio team, jokingly adding that it's a very promising company. He added that the traction the company has received so far from traditional financial institutions such as Pfizer and AstraZeneca is noteworthy.
“If Pfizer is interested in this company, and AstraZeneca and researchers at these institutes and hospitals are interested in this company, we believe that is real validation,” Alshahi said. he said. “That's just the beginning. I don't know of any other company this age that has this much momentum. [pharmaceutical] Giants. ”
Bexler said Promise Bio has received inbound interest from researchers and drug developers targeting other diseases, such as neurological conditions, but the team has so far found that Promise Bio is not a drug that affects an estimated 4% of the world's population. He said he is focusing on autoimmune diseases that affect people.
“It's really crazy that we're going through the same process that we used to manage these diseases 15 years ago,” Bexler said. “The treatment options are only going to increase. It's not sustainable. We can't continue with this trial and error of drug companies.”
This article has been updated to include information about the startup's third co-founder.