Kuano

UK-based Kuano is a drug discovery company that leverages the power of  AI, quantum physics, and medicinal chemistry to generate enhanced enzyme inhibitors which the company says are required for the creation of superior drugs. Its discovery platform performs enzyme modeling through quantum mechanical simulations to generate enzyme inhibitors that have strong binding at the quantum transition state, are highly selective, and can withstand mutations that cause loss of enzyme function. 

This approach is based on simulating quantum transition states in silico and does not rely on structure based drug discovery (SBDD) which uses ligand binding data. The company says SBDD is a time consuming and costly process and is based on an imperfect model of ligand-enzyme interactions.

Key customers and partnerships

The company’s platform is used for the company’s own therapeutics pipeline and with collaborative programs with academic partners, including Alzheimer’s Research UK and the University College London Drug Discovery Institute.

In June 2021, the company was awarded a grant by the UK Government under the “InnovateUK - Business-led innovation in response to global disruption” initiative to build a combined AI and modeling service for rapid response drug design to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic. The company is also a part of the Covid-19 High Performance Computing Consortium, working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) on accelerating the development of therapeutics to treat the virus. 

Funding and financials

Founded in 2020, the company raised GBP 1.8 million (~USD 2.4 million) in a seed funding round led by Mercia Ventures in September 2023 . The proceeds were used to support the growth and validation of Kuano's platform for enzyme-targeted drug discovery.