Investment to support scaling of technology platform and advance multiple biotech partnerships
NEW YORK - Oct. 7, 2019 - Redesign Science, a platform technology company combining computer science and biotechnology to advance new small molecule therapeutics, announced the successful completion of a $2 million seed financing.
Redesign Science uses powerful, massively parallel molecular dynamics simulation to reveal druggable opportunities within difficult or emerging drug targets - the basic drivers of disease. Redesign develops new therapeutics against these targets, which previously would have been considered challenging or undruggable due to a lack of available structure data. Redesign’s initial drug discovery partnerships apply to therapeutic areas ranging from cancer to IBD.
Working with partners to understand the biological drivers of disease, Redesign aims to develop and commercialize novel chemical matter, and to reveal subtle or previously unknown mechanisms of action. Cofounder and Redesign CTO Haotian Li explains the significance of this partnership approach: “Whereas before, the incompleteness of data in a given target space would have prevented a biotechnology company from moving forward with new assets, now Redesign can help those partners unlock the potential of those novel or less-understood targets.”
Proceeds from this round will drive execution of Redesign’s longer-term strategy. The firm will aggressively hire engineers to scale and automate its technology platform, while also financing its ongoing operations, including the cloud computing that is at the core of its business.
Notation led the round, joined by Morningside Venture Capital, Third Kind Venture Capital, Refactor Capital, and Thomas Weingarten. “We’re thrilled to be leading this financing in Redesign, and even more excited for the potential of Redesign’s platform to fundamentally change how therapeutics are developed, and disease is treated” said Nicholas Chirls, Partner at Notation.
“This is a critical moment in drug discovery - we have more extensive biological understanding and greater access to compute power than ever before, but the basic promise of rational drug design remains unfulfilled. We aim to fulfill this promise through the development and execution of a physics-based computational platform and by working closely with strategic partners on innovative early stage discovery,” said David Rooklin, Redesign Science CEO and cofounder.
About the platform - Redesign’s proprietary technology platform performs atomic level simulations of drug targets and their interactions with hundreds of millions of candidate small molecules. Redesign’s rational drug discovery process integrates the motion and dynamics of targets with energetic calculations, druggability detection, and virtual screening to establish an understanding of therapeutically relevant target characteristics, even when structure or crystal data for a given target is incomplete or unavailable.
The platform uses cloud computing to scale its simulation and screening methods rapidly according to the needs of a given program. By combining modern developments in cloud GPU computing and simulation methodology, Redesign can reduce the need for well-defined structural data, bringing rational design to the earliest stages of drug discovery.
About the company - Founded in 2017, Redesign Science is focused on delivering novel chemical matter to biotech partners. Redesign’s mission is to develop and optimize new therapeutics for novel or poorly understood targets, and to drastically reduce its partners’ time investment in early-stage drug discovery.
Media contact - press@redesignscience.com
