Archon Biosciences, a biotech startup that uses AI to design new biomolecules, just emerged from stealth with an impressive $20 million in seed funding. The company aims to enhance antibody treatments using specially designed protein “cages” that double their effectiveness and open new opportunities for drug development.
It is the first company to be formed independently of the Baker Institute, a research institute at the University of Washington directed by pioneering computational biologist and recent Nobel Prize winner David Baker. His team's research into generative protein design using AI and other means is fundamental to a rapidly evolving industry, and Archon is bringing certain aspects of it to market.
One of the drawbacks of antibody therapy (and the search for effective treatments), like all molecular biology, is that the process is somewhat dependent on chance. It is difficult to control how well an antibody or protein actually binds to its target on a cell or other surface.
What Alcon's antibody cage, or AbC, does (as described in this paper published in Science) is provide a scaffold to modify and increase its efficacy. While the chance of a floating antibody binding to a target protein may be small, if you paste 12 antibodies onto a large dodecahedron, that chance increases significantly, perhaps significantly.
This may be the difference between being able to determine whether a drug is effective or not.
“There have been a number of high-profile incidents that have led us to understand not only the biological properties of the targets, but also why past attempts to deliver drugs to them in the clinical setting have failed. These major disease vehicles are It's on our doorstep, but we lack the tools to respond safely and effectively,” Archon co-founder and CEO James Lazarovits explained in a press release. “We have developed a unique protein design platform that combines rapid in-house manufacturing and testing to revolutionize the way biologics are developed.”
The startup's protein design platform uses generative protein creation and simulation tools created at and licensed from Baker Lab, and the resulting AbCs can have a variety of effects. Also, no special manufacturing methods are required. If we can produce proteins and antibodies at scale, we can probably make AbC as well.
The $20 million round was led by Madrona Ventures with participation from DUMAC Inc., Sahsen Ventures, WRF Capital, Pack Ventures, Alexandria Venture Investments, and Cornucopian Capital. This funding is supplemented by approximately $7 million in grants from numerous research institutions and government agencies.
Archon, like UW and Baker Lab, is based in Seattle. TechCrunch will be visiting soon to learn and share more about this promising spinout.