Deep Genomics, the leading artificial intelligence (AI) therapeutics
company, announced today the closing of its Series B round with $40
million in new investment. The proceeds from this financing will be used
to develop new treatments for rare genetic diseases, and to expand the
company’s proprietary AI discovery platform to support the discovery and
development of novel therapies for more common disorders.
“For over twenty years, our team at Future Ventures has backed visionary
companies seeking to change the world for the better,” said Steve
Jurvetson, co-founder of Future Ventures and board member of Tesla and
SpaceX. “Deep Genomics has pioneered a better way to systematically
discover new therapies with a much higher success rate than
traditional pharma methods. My partner Maryanna Saenko and I are excited
to be joining them on a journey to modernize drug development by using
AI to design and derisk drug development programs up front, instead of
relying on trial-and-error experiments that are fraught with time delays
and high cost.”
“Therapeutically re-engineering the human genome is the final frontier,”
said Brendan Frey, founder and CEO of Deep Genomics. “Doing so requires
systems that can predict information pertaining to the genome, and the
best technology we have for prediction is AI. We have found that the
more we explore the universe of genetic therapies using AI, the more we
discover dark regions that can be illuminated only with the development
of new technology. This financing will enable us to expand our AI
technology in the pursuit of new therapeutic opportunities, to advance
our Wilson program into the clinic, and to strategically partner assets
emerging from our overflowing preclinical pipeline.”
Deep Genomics uses AI to power every stage of drug development, from
identifying therapeutic targets that were previously dismissed as being
undruggable, to designing novel therapeutic candidates, to designing
animal models. The approach results in remarkable clarity and speed: 70
percent of research projects have led to therapeutic leads, and programs
have been taken from target discovery to drug candidate in less than 12
months. The company plans to advance two programs to IND in 2020 and
obtain Phase 1/2 data for its Wilson disease candidate in 2021.
“The powerful application of AI at Deep Genomics has created a drug
development platform that is rapidly producing high quality drug
candidates,” said Dion Madsen, partner at the biotech VC firm Amplitude
Ventures. “We are excited to support this leading precision medicine
company by investing in their new approach to drug development.”
About Deep Genomics. Deep Genomics is developing a universe of
individualized genetic medicines by creating AI systems that are used to
accelerate all steps of drug discovery and development, including target
discovery, lead optimization, toxicity assessment and innovative trial
design. Since its inception in 2015, Deep Genomics has used high
throughput assays and advanced robotics systems to generate billions of
data points and has built dozens of carefully engineered and validated
machine learning systems that support drug development. Deep Genomics is
located in the heart of Toronto, the fastest growing tech hub in North
America. For more information, visit www.deepgenomics.com
and follow us on Twitter at @deepgenomics.
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