The seed round was led by Episode1 with backing from Seedcamp, Cambridge Enterprise, and January Ventures to fund DNA testing kits and platform development.
"We urgently need more people contributing to medical science, but the gap between those wanting to take part and actually knowing how to is huge. The scientific community has long relied on time-starved doctors signposting patients to clinical trials which just isn’t an effective way to get decent levels of participation. The pandemic has added further challenges, as many patients with rare and chronic diseases are unable to safely leave home."
The seed round was led by Hoxton Ventures with backing from dRx Capital and Founders Factory.
"Our sole focus at Peptone is to embrace experimental failure and, in fact, acknowledge it as an absolutely vital stage in the process of getting the design of protein-based medicines right. Great science is always born out of failure. The reality is that drug discovery in Big Pharma sees only a small fraction of protein based drugs pass the preclinical stages due to their complexity. Pharma, just like any industry, is subject to the ‘power law’. A small number of innovative drugs generate disproportional benefits to patients and outsized capital returns. We are working on shifting this failure-to-success ratio in a meticulously predictable and repeatable way using the best computational methods and scalable data science. Only last week one of our clients produced a monoclonal antibody for which our platform suggested seven radical mutations. The said therapeutic protein got vastly improved. The probability of a human researcher being able to engineer this type of change is equal to 1/1,280,000,000. In layman terms you are four times more likely to win the Powerball lottery than to spontaneously find the solution our platform has identified in less than ten days. The business of protein therapeutics is a huge industry and as we grow and further develop our supercomputing capacity we can help make significant progress in the time to market for much sought-after protein-based treatments."
The seed round was co-led by BGF and Longwall Venture Partners with participation from seed backers including BioCity, Alderley Park Ventures, and Puffin Point.
"This marks a huge step forward for Kinomica and for KScan™, as we look to the future of cancer treatment. Our pioneering technology offers much-needed support for the development of new precision medicines and represents a new approach to drug trials and treatments that will have a huge impact on patients’ lives."
The Norwich-based diagnostics firm secured £1.3m immediately with up to £2m committed for 2021 from a syndicate of angel and local enterprise investors.
"There’s a vast, global potential in the application of our unique technology. We are using it to tackle Covid now, but it will also produce better vaccines and new diagnostic and therapeutic products in the future. The investment we have secured will enable us to attract new talent to the team at Iceni and maximise the significant opportunities we have in our pipeline."
The Zero Carbon Fund led the oversubscribed pre-seed round to support algal gene editing and prototype development.
"We are thrilled to joining the Zero Carbon Fund portfolio and to have their support while building the next generation of climate mitigation technologies that the world so desperately needs"
