VANCOUVER, British Columbia– Gandeeva Therapeutics, a precision biotechnology company harnessing the power of cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and machine learning to develop novel therapeutics at an accelerated pace, today announced it has raised US$40 million in Series A funding led by Lux Capital and Leaps by Bayer, with participation from Obvious Ventures, Amgen Ventures, Amplitude Ventures and Air Street Capital.
The funding will be used to advance Gandeeva’s AI-driven cryo-EM platform with the aim to accelerate the discovery, design and development of novel precision medicines. The proprietary platform combines highly innovative technologies across biochemistry, structural biology, imaging and machine learning to characterize protein-drug interactions at the atomic level, all designed to provide new insights into targeting protein function.
“For decades, we have known that understanding the language by which proteins are folded and function in the native context of the cell is fundamental to deciphering biology. Altered protein function is implicated in nearly every disease,” said Dr. Sriram Subramaniam, Founder and CEO, Gandeeva Therapeutics. “Gandeeva endeavors to unlock these mysteries by moving beyond recent developments in cryo-EM technology and in AI-driven approaches to structural biology by integrating these technologies in its pioneering platform. I’m thrilled to be leading an interdisciplinary and diverse team of biologists, chemists, microscopists and engineers to achieve this shared mission.”
“The combination of cryo-EM and AI is unlocking and democratizing atomic resolution at scale, and Gandeeva’s platform and team sits squarely at the interface of these two technologies,” said Adam Goulburn, Partner, Lux Capital. “By digitizing and automating cryo-EM imaging, Gandeeva is leading the transformation of structural biology-led drug discovery.”
“We are excited about Gandeeva’s platform and it’s potential to combine prediction and experimentation to optimize drug design by visualizing protein-drug interactions and analyzing at the level of atoms, with unprecedented speed,” said Jürgen Eckhardt, Head of Leaps by Bayer. “Gandeeva’s focus on applying their powerful technologies to dramatically improve drug development is aligned with our ambition to transform health with data, enabling breakthroughs in precision medicine and beyond.”
Gandeeva is leading the precision imaging revolution with a unique blend of cryo-EM and machine learning, arguably the yin and yang of the new alphabet of structural biology, as Dr. Subramaniam notes in a commentary recently published in the journal Nature Methods.
The unprecedented speed at which Dr. Subramaniam’s team produced the first atomic level snapshot of the Omicron spike protein and published it in the journal Science is real world evidence of the strength behind Gandeeva’s platform.
