LONDON & BUDAPEST, Hungary– Turbine, a company developing a cell behavior simulation platform, today announced the closing of a €20 million Series A financing round. Mercia and MSD Global Health Innovation (GHI) Fund (MSD is the trade name of Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway NJ, USA) co-led the financing, joined by Day One Capital and existing investors Accel, Delin Ventures, and XTX Ventures. In conjunction with the financing, MSD GHI Fund and Mercia Asset Management have delegated members to Turbine’s new Board.
Turbine will use the financing proceeds to drive its next generation, potential first-in-class programs targeting DNA Damage Repair. These programs were the first ever to be selected using Turbine’s proprietary Simulated Cell, which revealed relationships not described in public data before. Turbine leverages its technology at every stage of development, identifying associated biomarkers and combination strategies, as well as selecting in vitro and in vivo biological models for experimental validation. Turbine partners with biopharmaceutical companies seeking to deploy simulation to understand patients and overcome causes of resistance hindering drug development efforts in the clinic. Simulated Cells have already guided the pipelines of several global partners generating multiple predictions currently in clinical validation, including Bayer and two of the top 20 pharma companies by global revenue in 2021. Furthermore, the technology successfully identified dozens of clinically validated targets invisible to any other computational approach.
“MSD GHI looks forward to enabling acceleration of Turbine’s growth and expansion,” said David M. Rubin, Ph.D., Managing Director, MSD GHI Fund. “We believe Turbine’s Simulated Cell has the potential to transform key aspects of the oncology drug discovery and development process, providing insight at scale that will shed light on even the most challenging biological mechanisms.”
“While Mercia has a long track record of investing in companies using AI technologies for life sciences and healthcare, Turbine is one of our first investments in an AI platform designed to address historic challenges to drug development,” said Daniela Tsoneva, Investment Manager, VCT Funds at Mercia. “Turbine’s core technology is highly differentiated and already validated by early work with large pharma partners. We are excited to support Turbine as it advances the Simulated Cell, deepens our collective understanding of cancer biology, and makes drug development more efficient and more successful across the biopharma industry.”
“The idea sprung from our frustration that conventional experiments frequently lead to expensive and time-consuming drug development failures,” said Szabolcs Nagy, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder, Turbine. “We’ve come a long way since 2016, when a handful of biologists and data scientists bootstrapped a technology to predict experiments better reflecting patients and more likely to translating in the clinic. With over 60 experts across the globe and the support of investors like MSD Global Health Innovation Fund and Mercia Asset Management, we’re poised to demonstrate that simulations not only reveal new ways of treating cancer but increase the likelihood of success at every single step of the drug development process.”
Osborne Clark LLP provided legal advice to Turbine on the transaction. Paul Hastings LLP and Green Shoots Consulting advised the MSD Global Health Innovation Fund and Eversheds Sutherland acted for Mercia.
