The UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund is backed by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Fund’s partners are 9 publicly funded research bodies, including STFC, BBSRC, NERC and Dstl. The Fund is independently managed by venture capital specialist Midven. They help build companies from great science developed in laboratories, science and technology campuses and synthetic biology. They hold investments in some of the UK’s most innovative companies, in areas as diverse as novel antibiotics, research into Alzheimer’s disease, “green” chemicals and airport security.

UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund

Future Planet Capital is the global impact-led venture capital firm built to back growth companies from the world's top universities and research ecosystems. The group manages $380m for institutional investors and has invested in over 300 companies, with 60 successful exits. It's portfolio is built around breakthrough technologies solving global challenges in Climate, Health, Education, Sustainable Growth and Climate Change.

Future Planet Capital

The Cambridge Angels are a group of high-net worth investors who have proven experience as successful entrepreneurs in internet, software, technology and bio-technology. Members invest in and mentor high quality start-up and early-stage companies in these sectors in the Cambridge (UK) area and throughout the UK. Typical funding requirements that the Cambridge Angels meet are in the range of £50,000 to £500,000 - although it is worth noting that several of their portfolio companies have received more than £1m in funding from their Members over several funding rounds. Their Members have been responsible for a large number of the “Cambridge Phenomenon” success stories over recent years. Therefore, in addition to providing funding for early-stage companies, the Cambridge Angels also offer start-ups the considerable benefit of a wide range of expertise, contacts and directly relevant experience in establishing and growing entrepreneurial businesses successfully.

Cambridge Angels group

The Angel CoFund (ACF) is a UK based venture capital fund that co-invests alongside syndicates of sector-smart Angel investors, to fund and scale some of the best high-potential early-stage businesses. The Angel CoFund (ACF) is an active co-investment fund that seeks to achieve consistent returns by partnering with experienced syndicates of angel investors to help fund and scale early-stage businesses. Launched in 2011, ACF’s experienced team has a track record of backing some of the UK’s best success stories through its proven co-investment model, working alongside the unrivalled skills and expertise of the fund’s network of entrepreneurs and private investor partners.   Since its launch, the fund has invested over £40M, alongside more than £200M from business angels and other investors, creating a portfolio of more than 80 companies. In many cases, the fund has supported companies through multiple rounds of funding as they have scaled.

ACF Investors

Wren is an angel investor in science, engineering and software. They founded Wren in 2011 and have invested in 50 companies so far.Wren is well known in the early stage investment community and has co-invested with a wide range of both angel and institutional investors.  From software and semiconductors to genome editing, and from medical devices to satellites, they are interested in sectors where technical ingenuity and hard work can produce long term value. They look for people with a deep understanding of their markets. The founders they invest in are smart and they get things done. Wren typically invests £50,000 to £200,000 per funding round. Difficult problems take time to solve, so they are patient with their investments. Their aim is to get deals done and they take a pragmatic approach to doing so.

Wren Capital

SyndicateRoom is fintech company made up of data-scientists, investment professionals, software developers and marketers with one mission: to be an early investor in every British startup success story. To do this – and make fund investors money – we don’t try to spot the next Big Thing. Instead, we apply a data-driven model to portfolio construction; a repeatable process designed to maximise returns and minimise risk for fund investors. As such, we build startup portfolios that don’t attempt to predict the future; they work to stack the odds in investors’ favour. Our fund, Access EIS, aims to build investors a diversified portfolio of 50+ companies by co‑investing exclusively with some of the UK’s best-performing angel investors.

SyndicateRoom

Development Bank of Wales is formed in 2001 by the Welsh Assembly Government. Development Bank of Wales is an independent company, providing commercial funding to Welsh SMEs. They invests private and public funds, including EU funds.

Development Bank of Wales

Tensor Ventures is a Prague-based venture capital company Investing in Deep Tech and Sustainable innovation in the CEE+. Supported by AI-based discovery technology, we continuously scout new talent, projects, founders, and early-stage startups at leading universities and in the CEE startup ecosystem.  Our link to undiscovered talent, technology, and university projects gives us the edge in finding winners early.  Beyond Central Europe, our global network of direct connections to Silicon Valley and Asia venture capital offers support and potential synergies to our core projects. With our business development support, we connect localized projects with global opportunities.  We offer a bridge between Seed and Series A stages by investing in opportunities that have high potential, but are not yet ready for larger funding rounds and gives us access to early value-creation opportunities. Investment size up to $2 million per target in Fund II (Fund I is fully invested).

Tensor Ventures

Innospark Ventures is a new breed of early-stage venture capital firm, investing in the AI-driven economy.

Innospark Ventures

Deep Science Ventures is an accelerator that works with scientists to build companies, from scratch, across domains from biochemistry to nano-tech. They provide a basic salary to fund the first 3 months of the program, followed by a £30k investment into those teams that demonstrate the commercial and technical viability of their startup.  It is based in London, United Kingdom.

Deep Science Ventures

AngelHub is the only SFC-regulated tech investment platform that enables investors to co-invest on a deal by deal basis along with their fund & institutional investors. AngelHub combines a highly selective due diligence process, diverse network of partners, and the WHub start-up ecosystem to empower tech entrepreneurs for success

AngelHub

NLS Ventures is an early stage investment firm based in Hong Kong.

NLS Ventures

The intersection of science, technology and ambition is where you’ll find Kadmos Capital, with our track record of successful tech investments and instinct for identifying the most exciting entrepreneurs. Our optimism isn’t shaken by the daunting challenges we face in an unstable world, it is strengthened. The biggest problems demand the most ambitious and ingenious solutions. With the pace of change now faster than ever, it’s vital to back the high-impact technologies that will deliver those solutions. At Kadmos Capital, that is where we are invested.

Kadmos Capital

Tomorrow Scale

i&i Biotech Fund (i&i Bio) is a Luxemburg-based venture capital firm that invests in innovative European Life Science companies focused on drug discoveries, medical devices, diagnostics, and digital health.

i&i Biotech Fund

Antiverse

Antiverse is a new type of antibody discovery company accelerating drug development. Its platform exists at the intersection of structural biology, machine learning, and medicine to enable breakthroughs to happen more quickly and cost-effectively. It is dedicated to engineering the future of drug development to change the course of people's lives.

<div>UK-based Antiverse is a computational antibody drug discovery platform that helps predict antibody-antigen interactions to find therapeutic antibody candidates. Its platform leverages machine learning, next-generation sequencing, and trained models to analyze the statistics gained from experiments. This can help lab scientists identify antibody candidates for various targets related to cancer, heart, and lung diseases. The company&rsquo;s main focus includes targeted selection, binder recovery, and binder customization.&nbsp;</div>

Artificial intelligence is identifying and testing new therapies faster than ever.

AI Drug Discovery

Antiverse: £3.5 Million Raised For Advancing GenAI-Based Antibody Design Platform

<div>
 
 UK-based Antiverse is a computational antibody drug discovery platform that helps predict antibody-antigen interactions to find therapeutic antibody candidates. Its platform leverages machine learning, next-generation sequencing, and trained models to analyze the statistics gained from experiments. This can help lab scientists identify antibody candidates for various targets related to cancer, heart, and lung diseases. The company&rsquo;s main focus includes targeted selection, binder recovery, and binder customization.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 Antiverse extended its existing partnership with 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22759">
 GlobalBio
 </a>
 in October 2023 to advance immune checkpoint inhibitors in cancer therapy. It also collaborated with a 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8204">
 top-20 pharmaceutical company
 </a>
 (name undisclosed) in January 2022 to jointly discover novel antibody drug candidates.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16808">
 March 2023
 </a>
 , Antiverse raised GBP 2.5 million (USD 3 million) in a seed funding round, with participation from new investors InnoSpark, AngelHub, and others. The proceeds were to support the development of in-house antibodies. 
 
</div>

<div>
 
 HiberCell is a biotechnology company that develops novel therapies focused on oncology. It entered the AI drug discovery space when it acquired AI genomics analysis company Genuity Science (and its subsidiaries in Iceland and Ireland) in August 2021.&nbsp;
 
 
 Genuity Science&rsquo;s solutions include end-to-end therapeutic discovery and development services such as building custom disease datasets, discovering and prioritizing targets, identifying biomarkers, and optimizing clinical trials. Genuity Science leverages its AI-powered platform to manage, process, and analyze genomic data. HiberCell intends to use Genuity Science&rsquo;s AI/ML capabilities to advance its oncology pipeline of five programs, of which one has reached the Phase 2 clinical trial stage.
 
 
 As of March 2024, the company&rsquo;s pipeline included three drug candidates, namely: 1) HC-7366, targeting the general control nonderepressible 2 (GCN2) kinase as part of the integrated stress response (ISR) signaling pathway; 2) HC-5404, aimed at inhibiting the PKR-like endoplasmic reticulum kinase (PERK) involved in the unfolded protein response (UPR) signaling pathway; and 3) odetiglucan, a therapy targeting tumor-immune interactions within the tumor microenvironment​.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 In December 2023, HiberCell and Merck &amp; Co partnered to conduct a Phase Ib trial to evaluate the combination therapy of belzutifan and HC-7366 for treating clear cell renal cell carcinoma. Further, in January 2021, the company partnered with Biodesix to develop an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay as a companion diagnostic test.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://hibercell.com/news/hibercell-closes-67-4-million-series-b-financing-and-secures-30-million-debt-facility-from-hercules-capital/">
 May 2021
 </a>
 , HiberCell completed a Series B financing round, raising USD 67.4 million, and secured an additional USD 30 million in debt financing from Hercules Capital. The funds were expected to be used for clinical advancement of its novel therapeutic candidates. 
 
</div>

HiberCell

<div>
 
 Arbor Biotechnologies specializes in gene editing to develop novel therapeutics for a variety of indications, starting with liver-related diseases. It operates an AI-powered biodiscovery platform to discover novel CRISPR enzymes, which are sequences of repeating genetic code. To do this, its platform deploys computational search techniques, genome sequencing, gene synthesis, and high-throughput screening. This can eventually be turned into drugs or even applied to agriculture and other industrial uses. In 2018, the company announced the discovery of Cas13d, a new type of gene editing enzyme that helps to alter RNA to treat genetic diseases.&nbsp;
 
 
 As of February 2024, the company had five internal drug discovery programs, of which one was in the IND-enabling stage. It also has multiple collaborative programs under development focused on oncology and various other therapeutic areas.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company has a long-standing partnership with Vertex Pharmaceuticals since
 <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190103005194/en/Vertex-and-Arbor-Biotechnologies-Establish-Collaboration-to-Discover-Novel-Proteins-to-Advance-Discovery-of-Gene-Editing-Therapies">
 January 2019
 </a>
 , which focused on developing gene-editing treatments for cystic fibrosis and four other diseases. The alliance was further extended in 
 <a href="https://www.biospace.com/article/vertex-and-arbor-strike-a-1-2-billion-deal-for-gene-editing-programs/">
 August 2021
 </a>
 and 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15741">
 January 2023
 </a>
 .&nbsp;
 
 
 Other partnerships included a collaboration with 
 <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/arbor-biotechnologies-announces-collaboration-with-ginkgo-bioworks-to-advance-the-discovery-and-development-of-precision-gene-editors-302011991.html">
 Ginkgo Bioworks
 </a>
 (December 2023) to leverage Ginkgo's R&amp;D services to further optimize Arbor's novel precision editors, a non-exclusive licensing agreement with 
 <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/02/08/2380680/0/en/EdiGene-and-Arbor-Biotechnologies-Announce-Worldwide-Non-exclusive-License-Agreement-to-Advance-Ex-Vivo-Engineered-Cell-Therapy-Programs.html">
 EdiGene
 </a>
 (February 2022) to leverage Arbor&rsquo;s platform for ex vivo oncology therapies, a strategic research and non-exclusive licensing agreement with 
 <a href="https://investors.tcr2.com/news-releases/news-release-details/tcr2-therapeutics-and-arbor-biotechnologies-establish">
 TCR2 Therapeutics
 </a>
 (January 2022) to develop allogeneic TRuC T-cell therapies using Arbor&rsquo;s CRISPR technology, and a license agreement with 
 <a href="https://www.lonza.com/news/2020-12-23-14-00">
 Lonza
 </a>
 (December 2020) to use Arbor&rsquo;s gene-editing technology for Lonza&rsquo;s bioproduction products and services.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In its latest Series B funding round in November 2021, which was led by Ally Bridge Group, TCG Crossover, and Temasek, Arbor Biotechnologies raised USD 215 million. The proceeds of the round were earmarked to fuel the company&rsquo;s clinical development pipeline.
 
</div>

Arbor Biotechnologies

Based in the UK, Arctoris provides an automated drug discovery platform, offering fully validated research and development (R&amp;D) processes under an Experiments-as-a-Service model. The company works with biotechnology companies, AI drug discovery companies, pharma and academic institutions enabling these institutions to run experiments in Arctoris’s platform and provides on-demand access to a broad scale of datasets for AI drug discovery companies to train their algorithms.

Arctoris

<div>
 
 Frontier Medicines leverages AI/ML technologies to develop treatments for cancer-causing proteins that are dismissed by traditional pharma companies as undruggable.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company has a proprietary chemoproteomic platform which entails an approach based on the interaction of small-molecule compounds and proteins to screen a large number of targets and combine them with a protein database that contains more than 150,000 novel binding pockets (hotspots). This enables it to access 90% of the human proteome that were not previously targeted due to lack of hotspots. The platform&rsquo;s AI/ML engine incorporates a library of diverse compounds, a hotspot map that serves as the starting point for understanding the druggability of a potential therapeutic target, and lead design and generation.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company focuses on oncology and immunology target and, as of February 2024, it had five wholly-owned therapeutic programs and three AbbVie-partnered programs in its pipeline. All programs were in their discovery stage, except the company&rsquo;s lead candidate, FMC-376 (activated and inactivated forms), focused on treating different cancer types, including non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), colorectal carcinoma (CRC), and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), which is in the IND-enabling stage.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company entered a USD 100 million partnership with 
 <a href="https://news.abbvie.com/2020-12-02-AbbVie-and-Frontier-Medicines-Establish-Global-Partnership-to-Discover-and-Develop-Novel-Therapies-and-E3-Degraders-Against-Difficult-to-Drug-Targets">
 AbbVie
 </a>
 In December 2020 to develop small-molecule therapeutics against hard-to-drug protein targets including around 600 E3 ligases (the enzymes that drive the ubiquitination and degradation of proteins.&nbsp;
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In July 2021, the company raised USD 88.5 million in a 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4347">
 Series B
 </a>
 funding round co-led by Woodline Partners LP and RA Capital Management, with equal participation from Deerfield Management Company. The proceeds were earmarked for advancing the company&rsquo;s drug pipeline and expanding operations in Boston, where its new facility was to complement the company&rsquo;s headquarters in California. 
 
</div>

Frontier Medicines

<div>
 
 Verge Genomics is a biotechnology company engaged in developing therapeutics for neurological diseases using human genomics and AI to accelerate drug discovery. The main target areas are Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson&rsquo;s Disease (PD), and Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD).&nbsp;
 
 
 It has built a proprietary all-human platform (unlike standard clinical trials that rely on animal data), called CONVERGE, that uses data sets from brain tissue samples of deceased patients with ALS and PD. While most drugs target only one gene at a time, the company claims its technology can identify hundreds of genes that cause disease and develop drugs that target all the genes at the same time. The company uses AI technology to optimize the drug discovery process as a whole.
 
 
 As of March 2024, Verge had one drug candidate in the clinical stage (Phase I) and 10 drug candidates in the discovery stage.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company has partnerships with various tissue banks (such as Harvard University and University of Miami Miller School of Medicine) and several educational institutes and foundations (such as Target ALS, Answer ALS) that enabled its drug discovery platform.&nbsp;
 
 
 In addition, the company&rsquo;s customers include several pharmaceutical companies, such as 1) 
 <a href="https://www.vergegenomics.com/news-blog/verge-genomics-announces-research-collaboration-with-the-sheffield-institute-for-translational-neuroscience">
 Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN)
 </a>
 to accelerate the validation of novel drug targets and screening of drug compounds for Parkinson's disease (February 2021), 2) 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4146">
 Eli Lilly
 </a>
 to research and develop novel therapies to treat ALS (July 2021), 3) 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21707">
 Alexion
 </a>
 to identify novel drug targets for rare neurodegenerative and neuromuscular diseases (September 2023), and 4) 
 <a href="https://www.vergegenomics.com/news-blog/verge-genomics-and-the-pritzker-neuropsychiatric-disorders-research-consortium-form-cutting-edge-schizophrenia-research-collaboration">
 Pritzker Neuropsychiatric Disorders Research Consortium
 </a>
 to analyze data from schizophrenic patient&rsquo;s brain tissue with Verge&rsquo;s technology (October 2023).
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In December 2021, Verge raised USD 98 million in an oversubscribed 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/7426">
 Series A
 </a>
 funding round led by BlackRock. The funds were used to scale up its pre-clinical and clinical candidate programs in the pipeline and enhance its lead therapeutics through clinical testing. 
 
</div>

Verge Genomics

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies providing their ML platform to other pharma companies for drug discovery services such as target selection, validation and lead optimization.

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies providing their ML platform to other pharma companies to design and run preclinical experiments.

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies providing their ML platform to other pharma companies to identify biomarkers (measurable biological signs used to determine disease progression) and predict drug response. 

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies aggregating and analyzing biomedical data with the help of AI to generate insights across the drug development pipeline.

Biotechnology companies that have integrated AI as a core component of their in-house drug development process. They typically have a few in-house drug development programs, and also collaborate with pharma companies to develop certain drugs.

Companies leverage GenAI to support drug discovery through accelerated drug designing

Companies offer AI/ML-based SaaS products to accelerate the discovery and development of novel therapeutics

Offers AI/ML-based solutions to accelerate drug discovery and development

PROMINENT_CATEGORY

<div>
 
 Antiverse, an antibody developer, has entered a partnership agreement with Nxera Pharma, a biopharmaceutical company based in Tokyo, to design antibodies for G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). Under this agreement, Antiverse is slated to receive an upfront payment in addition to research funding. In exchange, Nxera obtains an exclusive worldwide license that allows them to develop and commercialize the antibody assets.
 This joint venture will exploit Antiverse's GenAI antibody design assets, most notably, its proprietary epitope-specific libraries generated by Machine Learning. These resources will be utilized along with Nxera’s NxWave platform, built with a special emphasis on GPCR target selection, validation, and structural determination. The collaborative effort aims to allow the design of antibodies for diseases with a high unmet medical need. The inaugural project of this partnership is expected to zero in on designing antibodies with agonistic functions for a challenging GPCR target.
</div>

Antiverse

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