The novel coronavirus first discovered in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019 has shaken the world like no other pathogen this century. The spread of the virus, now called SARS-CoV-2, and the associated covid-19 illness affected the healthcare systems around the world and other aspects of daily life including education, entertainment, work and socialising.
Vaccine development, which typically involves a lengthy and intricate process, has accelerated in the past year, with different healthtech and biotech ecosystem builders attempting to produce an effective candidate to help deliver a world free from the disease. Two RNA vaccines in particular have been widely authorised by health regulators: the Pfizer-BioNTech and the Moderna vaccines, with over 90% and 94% efficacy, respectively.
RNA vaccines introduce a messenger RNA (mRNA) sequence into the body for the cells to produce the antigens to spark an immune response – mRNA is a family of molecules that deliver genetic code from the DNA to the ribosome, telling it how to link amino acids. This is different from some traditional inoculations that would use a weakened or inactive version of the viruses. The RNA technology enables vaccines to be made more quickly from the pathogen’s genetic information.
Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine, named tozinameran, was developed by Germany-based immuno-oncology therapy developer BioNTech in association with US-headquartered pharmaceutical firm Pfizer.
Spun out of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in 2008, BioNTech initially focused on personalised cancer treatments before it began working on novel mRNA technology in early 2020, in the wake of the disclosure of the SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequence. The company was backed by Pfizer and fellow pharma groups Eli Lilly and Sanofi before it went public on the Nasdaq Global Select Market in 2019.
Moderna, on the other hand, had been concentrating on mRNA therapeutics since it was incubated by venture capital firm Flagship Ventures in 2010. Its jab against covid-19 is formally called mRNA-1273 and was developed with the United States National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.
It counted pharmaceutical conglomerates AstraZeneca, Merck & Co and Alexion among its shareholders before it raised roughly $604m in an initial public offering on the Nasdaq Global Select Market in late 2018, which was – and remains – the largest for a biotech company.
But while the big drugs companies are excited by mRNA to tackle viral diseases, they are also looking at how digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) can help them uncover ways to treat other common diseases, such as cancer, Alzheimer’s and diabetes, which have historically often been bigger killers than viruses, such as flu, measles and chicken pox.
UK-based Exscientia recently raised $100m in its series C round to develop its AI drug discovery platform, CentaurAI, used by Bristol Myers Squibb, Sanofi, Bayer and Dainippon Sumitomo, among others, to tackle diseases. Mutual fund manager BlackRock joined the C round alongside corporate venturing units from Novo, Evotec and Bristol Myers Squibb.
Andrew Hopkins, CEO of Exscientia, said: “BlackRock’s investment is an important step in our vision that all drugs will be designed by AI”.
As trade paper Fierce Biotech said: “Exscientia differentiated itself from other AI-enabled drug discovery shops in its early days through algorithms that actually design novel molecules – rather than just screening for hits or assisting in the design process – and with its commitment to hiring experienced drug hunters to use its platform. Andy Bell, co-inventor of Pfizer’s Viagra, was an early big-name hire.”
It was the latest in a series of large rounds for AI drug discovery platforms in the past year.
In the same week, Genomics, another UK-based precision healthcare technology developer backed by drug manufacturer Vertex Pharmaceuticals, closed a $30m funding round. Founded in 2014 out of University of Oxford, Genomics has developed a machine learning-powered genomic analytics platform that determines the risk of individuals for common diseases before they manifest.
Apart from delivering its population health management services and clinical decision support tools, the company also uses its insights to support the discovery and development of treatments.
US-based medical diagnostics technology developer Paige in January secured $100m in a series C round co-led by medical products group Johnson & Johnson’s investment arm, Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC.
Leo Grady, Paige’s CEO, said: “Paige is building a transformational portfolio of computational pathology products to serve clinical needs and drive precision medicine. This investment reaffirms the vast potential of the Paige platform for clinical and biopharmaceutical drug development applications.
“These funds will enable us to build additional AI-based products within and outside of oncology, deliver these products to laboratories and clinicians globally and invest in our talent across engineering and commercial functions.”
In September, Germany-based pharmaceutical and agricultural product manufacturer Bayer invested $50m to lead a $239m series D round for US-based drug discovery technology provider Recursion.
Recursion is combining automation and machine-learning technology with what it claims is the largest biological image dataset in the world to discover drug treatments for a range of conditions, including cancer and genetic disorders such as neurofibromatosis or GM2 gangliosidosis.
Bayer’s investment was made in connection with a strategic partnership deal that will involve it using Recursion’s platform to discover treatments for fibrotic diseases affecting the lungs, kidney and heart.
Juergen Eckhardt, head of Leaps by Bayer, said: “With a pipeline of over 30 programmes ranging from early discovery to clinical stage, including four clinical stage assets, Recursion is defining and leading technology-enabled drug discovery and has the potential to help enable new curative treatments in a large spectrum of disease areas and discover therapeutic candidates for intractable diseases.”
In August, US-based drug discovery technology provider Atomwise completed a $123m series B round that included internet group Tencent and two undisclosed insurance firms joining co-lead investors, B Capital Group and the Saudi state-owned Sanabil Investments.
Abraham Heifets, Atomwise’s co-founder and chief executive, said: “Over the past three years, our platform AtomNet has tackled – and succeeded – in finding small molecule hits for more undruggable targets than any other AI drug discovery platform.
“With support from our new and existing investment partners, we will be able to leverage this to develop our own pipeline of small molecule drug programmes, further grow our portfolio of joint-venture investments and realise our vision to create better medicines that can improve the lives of billions of people.”
In May, US-based drug discovery technology developer Insitro received $143m in series B funding from investors including subsidiaries of internet and technology group Alphabet, pharmaceutical firm WuXi AppTec and life sciences real estate investment trust Alexandria Real Estate Equities.
Insitro, which has a strategic collaboration with biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences dating back to the previous year, has created a drug discovery platform that utilises uses learning and bioengineering technology to compile huge datasets that are used to locate promising drug targets for liver and central nervous system diseases.
Chen Zhou, an investment director for Samsung Catalyst Fund (SCF), South Korea-headquartered consumer electronics producer Samsung’s strategic investment vehicle, said two areas are of significant interest in 2021: “As the sequencing cost continues to decline, we believe healthcare will become increasingly data-driven which represents a massive opportunity for genomic care and precision medicine services.
“In the next few years, early cancer detection based on liquid biopsy will be cheap enough that everyone over the age of 50 will get sequenced as part of their annual check-up. We are very excited for our portfolio company Genome Medical, which is trying to democratise access to genomic care through its telemedicine platform.
“Another trend we are seeing is that automation and computational biology have become an increasingly important part of biopharma’s research and development workflow. In particular, massive parallelisation of lab experiments is being enabled by semiconductor technologies, which generates orders of magnitude more data to be analysed by AI than before. The large datasets not only unveil novel insights on the drug targets but also enable rapid screening and rapid iterations of experiments.
“This accelerated feedback loop is dramatically reducing the development timeline and increasing the likelihood of success. For example, Berkeley Lights is enabling biopharmas to study and manipulate thousands of cells in parallel at a single cell level through its highly automated system and its opto-nanofluidic chips. We believe we will continue to see more companies emerging in this space.”
