DeepCure announced the closing of its $40 million Series A financing round. The round, led by Morningside Ventures, brings the company’s total amount raised to $47 million since it was founded in 2018.
A Boston-based biotech company is the latest player to enter the artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery space. On Monday, DeepCure announced the closing of its $40 million Series A financing round. The round, led by Morningside Ventures, brings the company’s total amount raised to $47 million since it was founded in 2018.
“We have made tremendous progress since founding DeepCure a few years ago, and this financing reflects strong support for our technology platform, people, strategy, and most importantly, our mission to accelerate the discovery of novel targets and therapies which were previously undruggable,” said Kfir Schreiber, CEO and co-founder of DeepCure.
The monies will be used to advance DeepCure’s novel, small molecule therapeutics pipeline and to build an automated robotic wet lab. The company also plans to double its number of drug discovery scientists and technologists over the next year and launch new sites in Greece and Israel as part of its global expansion.
Specifically, DeepCure plans to add five oncology programs to its pipeline. One of the company’s main goals is to develop drugs that are designed, synthesized and tested by AI, which will hopefully lead to faster cures for disease-relevant protein targets.
“DeepCure’s advanced drug discovery platform is further evidence of the power of data in the realm of life sciences,” said Stephen Bruso of Morningside Ventures. “By pairing the world’s largest molecular database with sophisticated AI algorithms, DeepCure has the ability to deliver novel small molecule therapeutics to patients with significant unmet need. We are proud to partner with them in this endeavor.”
AI has become an increasingly desirable space for companies looking to speed the discovery and development process of drugs and therapeutics to get them to patients in need in a timelier manner.
Another company that also recently entered the space is Isomorphic Laboratories. Isomorphic is an Alphabet-owned company that will use sister company DeepMind’s breakthrough Ai system for drug discovery and development.
In a statement last week, Isomorphic Founder and CEO Demis Hassabis said that the company’s mission is “to reimagine the entire drug discovery process from first principles with an AI-first approach and, ultimately, to model and understand some of the fundamental mechanisms of life.”
Other companies making headway in the AI space include Evotec, AstraZeneca and Altoida, among many others.
