Octant Bio

Octant Bio offers a multiomics platform that combines synthetic biology, genomics, high throughput chemistry, and biology to identify novel drug targets, proteins, and cellular pathways for treating complex diseases. Additionally, it uses its proprietary data sets to develop drugs based on genomes, biochemistry, and disease phenotypes (traits of a disease). 

The firm’s multiplexed assay platform and technology enable experiments at a massive scale that can be conducted parallelly, trained on small amounts of experimental data. This approach, termed Cellular Intelligence by Octant, studies relationships between genetics, chemistry, and complex diseases to discover pathways for developing effective treatments. It uses emerging technology, such as high throughput synthetic biology (used to determine what happens in a cell in relation to drug targets), advanced bioinformatics, and software techniques in the drug development process. 

Key customers and partnerships

The firm has partnered with global biopharmaceutical company Bristol Myers to identify inflammation-related targets using the former’s Deep Mutational Scanning (DMS) technology. DMS uses deep sequencing with a library of molecules to study mutations or variants related to a disease. The firm has also partnered with a laboratory to create SwabSeq to diagnose Covid-19 with the ability to run multiple tests simultaneously using next-generation DNA sequencing at a lower cost than PCR testing. 

Funding and Financials

In April 2022, the company raised USD 80 million in a Series B funding round led by Catalio Capital Management, which was allocated for the expansion of its platform capabilities. Additionally, the funds have been earmarked to expand its data sets and develop treatments for rare genetic diseases.