7th January 2020 Deep Genomics raises $40 million in series B financing Deep Genomics – a leading artificial intelligence (AI) therapeutics company – has announced 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. The funding was led by Future Ventures, which has an industry-leading track record, especially in new markets, and included several other top healthcare and technology funds. "For over 20 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 modernise 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." Toronto-based Deep Genomics, launched in July 2015, 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 has resulted in remarkable clarity and speed: 70% of research projects have led to therapeutic leads, and programs have gone from target discovery to drug candidate in under 12 months. The company plans to advance two programs to Investigational New Drug status 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, co-founder of Amplitude Ventures, another of the partners in this funding round. "We are excited to support this leading precision medicine company by investing in their new approach to drug development."
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