Mass.-based Seismic Therapeutic secured a new investor in Bessemer Venture Partners and $121 million in its Series B round as it looks to push its two lead candidates into the clinic.
Pictured: Financing concept/Getty Images
Startup Seismic Therapeutic has netted more funding to advance its candidates into the clinic, bringing its total raised to $222 million.
On Monday, the Cambridge, Mass.-based biotech announced it capped off a $121 million Series B, led by new investor Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from a slew of other first-time investors including Amgen Ventures, Condon Capital, Gaingels, Alexandria Venture Investments and GC&H. The raise also included participation from previous investors.
The cash from Seismic’s Series B round will be used to advance its two lead programs through Phase I trials. The programs are S-1117, a pan-immunoglobulin G protease sculpting enzyme candidate, and S-4321, a PD-1 agonist. The specific targets for these candidates, which are both currently in the IND-enabling development phase, were not specified. Seismic stated it will also use the funds to grow its pipeline and invest in its machine learning-based discovery platform.
“This financing enables us to continue our momentum and advance our exciting lead programs into the clinic. We believe the time is right to harness advances in machine learning to discover the next generation of biologics drugs to improve the lives of patients with autoimmune diseases,” Jo Viney, Seismic’s founder, president and CEO, said in a prepared statement.
Seismic’s last funding round came in February of 2022 when it raised $101 million in a Series A, landing the company on BioSpace’s Top Life Science Startups to Watch in 2023 list. The startup’s platform, known as IMPACT, combines machine learning, structural biology, translational immunology and engineering to find new biological candidates.
“Seismic has made impressive achievements in a short time integrating the power of machine learning with its deep drug development expertise to create two differentiated lead programs, each offering a compelling opportunity to address unmet medical needs in autoimmune diseases in a new way,” Andrew Hedin, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners and member of Seismic’s board of directors, said in a prepared statement.
While the biotech market has been rocky this year, some companies are still reeling in funding. In November, ViaNautis Bio received $25 million in Series A funding with names such as Eli Lilly and UCB attached to the raise.
Tyler Patchen is a staff writer at BioSpace. You can reach him at tyler.patchen@biospace.com. Follow him on LinkedIn.
