Transpacific AI biotech makes its Series A debut — putting $86M in the bank

Biotech Hub / By

With the rush of AI per­me­at­ing the biotech in­dus­try, an­oth­er AI play­er is com­ing out well-or­ga­nized and flush with cash. METiS Ther­a­peu­tics an­nounced this morn­ing that it suc­cess­ful­ly put $86 mil­lion in the bank, thanks to a Se­ries A.

Two in­vest­ment firms con­nect­ed to the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment (Peo­ple’s In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny of Chi­na and Chi­na Life In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny) led the fi­nanc­ing round — and were joined by Se­quoia Cap­i­tal Chi­na, 5Y Cap­i­tal and sev­er­al oth­er in­vestors.

‘To­day’s news rep­re­sents the first of many sig­nif­i­cant mile­stones that we will be ac­com­plish­ing through­out the next year,’ METiS CEO Chris Lai said in a state­ment.

The biotech, found­ed back in 2017 and with 70 em­ploy­ees in both Chi­na and in Cam­bridge, MA, plans to triple its US-based em­ploy­ees with­in the next 12 months.

Af­ter its found­ing, METiS part­nered with XtalPi, a Cam­bridge AI-fo­cused R&D com­pa­ny — where the biotech got seed fund­ing and in­cu­bat­ed for a time be­fore spin­ning out in ear­ly 2020.

So where is this Se­ries A mon­ey go­ing? The $86 mil­lion will be used to ad­vance the com­pa­ny’s pipeline, METiS said, along with con­tin­ued de­vel­op­ment of its AI drug dis­cov­ery and de­liv­ery plat­form, along the lines of RNA ther­a­peu­tics, gene ther­a­pies and small mol­e­cules. Con­cern­ing how far it’ll last the com­pa­ny? The com­pa­ny re­mained mum on the top­ic, on­ly say­ing ‘$86 mil­lion will take them [METiS] through mul­ti­ple mile­stones and val­ue in­flec­tion points.’

And while it is still ear­ly in the com­pa­ny’s his­to­ry, the com­pa­ny told End­points in an email that they do have some­thing in mind for ini­tial tar­gets: ‘or­phan dis­eases, CNS, au­toim­mune sys­tems and nephrol­o­gy,’ they said.

METiS is op­ti­mistic about tak­ing its can­di­dates to clin­i­cal tri­als soon — and ex­pects to file its first IND by end of June next year.

In terms of part­ner­ships, METiS said it is ‘align­ing right now with com­pa­nies and uni­ver­si­ties that can strength­en/com­ple­ment the tech­nolo­gies that fu­el our AiTEM plat­form and on our pro­grams,’ but de­cid­ed to not dis­close who those po­ten­tial part­ners are. And that is in tan­dem with on­go­ing talks with oth­er com­pa­nies about in-li­cens­ing cer­tain drug can­di­dates.
https://endpts.com/transpacific-ai-biotech-makes-its-series-a-debut-putting-86m-in-the-bank/

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