A Seattle biotech startup born from a Nobel laureate’s lab has landed $12.7 million and partnerships with pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Kite Pharma through the use of AI to design proteins that mount a multi-pronged assault on ailments.
Accipiter Biosciences emerged from stealth at present with a management staff that features researchers who labored on the College of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design beneath David Baker, a 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner for his breakthroughs in constructing proteins from scratch.
The corporate is utilizing synthetic intelligence instruments developed on the institute to engineer de novo proteins which have the bizarre capacity to bind a number of mobile targets without delay, probably amplifying their illness-fighting affect.
“We wish to set up this new modality,” stated Matthew Bick, Accipiter Bio’s co-founder and CEO. The technique, he added, might unlock new methods to extra successfully deal with difficult ailments.
There’s proof that mixtures of medicine generally carry out higher than single therapies, however the problem has been coordinating their actions so that they work collectively on the identical location.
In some types of most cancers, for instance, a number of cell capabilities must be turned on concurrently to supply useful molecules that work synergistically to create an impact “that isn’t simply additive, it’s multiplicative,” Bick stated.
The method might additionally pace U.S. Meals and Drug Administration approval and minimize prices. Usually, when two medication are mixed to deal with a situation, every should endure its personal costly Section 1 security trial, adopted by an extra trial testing them collectively. A single multi-functional drug would want only one Section 1 trial.
A number of avenues to drug therapies
Accipiter Bio has entered right into a collaboration and license settlement with Pfizer to analysis and engineer new molecules. The deal gives an upfront cost for the startup and the potential to earn greater than $330 million if Accipiter Bio hits sure milestones and thru royalties.
“With Accipiter’s platform know-how and collaboration, Pfizer goals to resolve complicated therapeutic issues with biologics which will have beforehand been unattainable,” stated Jeffrey Settleman, Pfizer Oncology R&D’s chief scientific officer.
Accipiter Bio additionally has an settlement with the oncology drug firm Kite, which is owned by Gilead Sciences, to design proteins to be used in cell therapies. The association equally contains preliminary funding with the potential of milestone funds and royalties. Kite has the choice of buying molecules created by way of the association and develop them into therapeutics for international gross sales.
On high of these efforts, Accipiter Bio has 4 of its personal drug-development applications. Two applications are getting ready for formal FDA discussions about human testing — a stage referred to as pre-IND .
Bick wouldn’t present particulars on the efforts, however stated the corporate is researching brokers for treating cancers and irritable bowel syndrome, amongst different illnesses.
Funding and management
Flying Fish Companions and Takeda Ventures co-led the seed spherical. Further buyers are Columbus Enterprise Companions, Cercano Capital, Washington Analysis Basis, Alexandria Investments, Pack Ventures and Argonautic Ventures.
“We’ve reached the purpose the place computation isn’t simply dashing up biology,” stated Heather Gorham, principal at Flying Fish Companions and Accipiter board member. “It’s increasing what’s biologically potential.”
The startup launched in March 2023 and beforehand raised about $800,000 to get off the bottom. Bick was a senior fellow in Baker’s lab for greater than seven years and later a senior director for Seattle’s Neoleukin Therapeutics.
Accipiter Bio has 17 workers. The management staff has three members along with Bick.
- Javier Castellanos, co-founder and chief technologist, was a graduate scholar with Baker; co-founder and CTO of Cyrus Biotechnology, one other protein design startup; and a previous director at Neoleukin.
- Hector Rincon, co-founder and chief scientist, was with Seagen (now a division of Pfizer) for greater than seven years the place he helped take a therapeutic from proof-of-concept to step one of getting a brand new drug accredited. He was additionally briefly at Neoleukin.
- William Canestaro, chief working officer and chief technique officer, has labored on the enterprise and investing aspect of biotech with roles on the UW’s Michael G. Foster College of Enterprise, Washington Analysis Basis, Pack Ventures, Pioneer Sq. Labs, Cyclera Therapeutics and others. He has served on the board of administrators for a number of startups.
Constructing on expertise
Whereas the technique of utilizing AI to construct a brand new class of proteins might open the door to groundbreaking therapies, drug growth is a dangerous enterprise.
Neoleukin was a biotech firm co-founded by Baker that spun out of the UW in 2019. The startup’s lead drug candidate, an engineered protein utilized in most cancers remedy, under-performed in a Section 1 trial. Neoleukin laid off a lot of its workers earlier than merging with one other firm.
The three co-founders met on the startup and gained worthwhile technical and strategic classes from the expertise, Bick stated. That included the necessity to have a number of drug applications operating without delay and insights into stopping immunogencity, which is an undesirable immune response to overseas our bodies.
“We have been a part of the staff,” he stated, “that took the primary absolutely de novo protein into sufferers.”
