Ability Biologics announced the final closing of its seed funding, raising a total of $18 million, a financing round led by founding investor Amplitude Ventures. Amplitude is joined by the Fonds de solidarité FTQ, Investissement Québec, Charles River Laboratories, Theodorus and Alexandria Venture Investments.
Ability – a pioneer in the application of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) to therapeutic discovery – focuses its platform on discovering and developing potent and selective antibody therapeutics for cancer and immune-related disorders. Ability Biologics, through its AbiLeap discovery engine, is generating novel, logic-enabled antibodies with the potential to become best-in-class or first-in-class therapeutics.
Ability’s leadership team has deep experience in immunology, antibody discovery, engineering and therapeutic development, from the bench to commercial stage, and is leveraging this experience to create next generation antibodies using powerful computational tools through its unique, proprietary AI platform. And the AbiLeap discovery engine is an AI platform built on top of one of the largest databases of antibody-antigen interactions ever constructed, bringing together more than five years of discovery data and incorporating both public and private data sources. AbiLeap enables Ability to address a longstanding challenge by generating fully human antibodies that are logic-gated, allowing them to target specific tissues and cells based on the local microenvironment, including conditions such as secondary antigens, pH, temperature and/or the presence of specific metabolites.
KEY QUOTES:
“We’re seeing a need for a new generation of antibodies and modalities as simply binding, blocking or agonizing a single receptor is not enough to achieve therapeutic impact. At Ability, our platform overlays multiple approaches in a single molecule, enhancing specificity and selectivity to develop potent therapeutics with broad therapeutic windows. To do so, our antibodies employ tried and tested IgG formats that enable easier manufacturing, storage and administration, avoiding complex formats that introduce multiple risks from manufacturing to immunogenicity.”
– Giles Day, Co-founder and CEO of Ability
“We are focused on solving the next set of complex biology challenges and one of them is to tackle the issue of on-target, off-tissue toxicity, which is limiting the utility of antibody therapy. Ability’s proprietary platform stands out as an intelligent way of rapidly developing selective and potent, ultra-targeted biotherapeutics to enhance potency and patient outcomes.”
– Dion Madsen, CFA, Co-founder and Partner at Amplitude Ventures
“The life science and biotech sector is in constant flux, and we are proud to provide financial backing for Ability’s ongoing innovations. Harnessing the latest technologies, like artificial intelligence, in the development of antibodies will solidify Québec’s expertise in an area that is critical to the treatment of various types of cancer, and ultimately other diseases, that affect many Quebecers every year.”
– Bicha Ngo, President and CEO of Investissement Québec
