Colorado-based AI drug discovery specialist Enveda Biosciences has raised $311 million in a Series E financing, a sum rivaling totals secured in some of the biotechnology sector’s larger initial public offerings this year.
In a Wednesday announcement, the startup said it would use the cash to continue advancing its pipeline of drugs through the clinic. Three are in human testing.
Enveda uses artificial intelligence to identify molecules in living organisms like plants and microbes and predict their structure and function. Its system then ranks these molecules by their drug potential, after which Enveda’s chemists turn the most promising ones into drug prospects. In June, Enveda CEO and founder Viswa Colluru told BioPharma Dive that the company is already evaluating 17 programs to emerge from that research.
“As much as the industry has gotten comfortable with the more iterative approaches, the thing that moves the needle for patients and seeds power law returns for companies is first-in-class mechanisms that shift the paradigm,” Colluru said at the time.
Earlier this year, Enveda revealed Phase 1 data from a pair of AI-designed programs for atopic dermatitis and obesity.
One of those programs, ENV-294, is a “molecular glue” that showed the potential to reduce eczema symptoms in a small, early clinical trial. Colluru said that Enveda’s drug, a pill, could help people who don’t respond to approved atopic dermatitis treatments like Dupixent. Phase 2 trials are underway in eczema and asthma.
Alongside that drug is ENV-308, which Enveda has billed as a “pill designed from the chemistry of exercise.” That experimental therapy mimics a hormone, “Lac-Phe,” the body releases after exercise or meals, and displayed an encouraging safety profile in early-stage testing. The company plans to test ENV-308’s ability to help people maintain weight loss after stopping GLP-1 use.
by Gwendolyn Wu
Source: biopharmadive.com
A phase 2 celiac disease trial of argenx’s FB102 has hit its primary endpoint, delivering a boost to a drug candidate that the biotech acquired in its $2.2 billion takeover of Forte Biosciences. Amsterdam-based argenx agreed to buy Forte in July to acquire FB102, an anti-CD122 antibody that hit the mark in a phase 1b vitiligo trial weeks before the deal.
Bayer announced plans to invest $2.2 billion in a new pharmaceutical manufacturing site in New Albany, Ohio, US. Building on more than seven billion dollars in US pharma R&D and manufacturing spend over the past five years, the project is a central element of Bayer’s long-term growth strategy.
Sterling Pharma Solutions has announced completion of an additional, large-scale GMP manufacturing suite at its dedicated bioconjugation facility in the UK, which will double capacity, as well as increasing the scale of manufacturing to 500L.
