BioPhy: $4.5 Million Raised To Use AI For Accelerating The Development Of Promising Drug Candidates

By Amit Chowdhry • Nov 20, 2023

BioPhy recently launched its AI operating system to radically accelerate the identification and developing of the most promising drug candidates. And by combining scientific, clinical, and regulatory insights with a proprietary operational assessment model, BioPhy’s AI platform is designed to assess biological feasibility and predict the likelihood a clinical trial will have a positive outcome, steering capital allocation and expediting time to market.

In live testing over the last 27 months, the validated technology predicted the outcomes of over 1,500 clinical trials with 80 percent accuracy, solidifying BioPhy’s ability to save pharmaceutical companies millions of dollars in clinical development. And BioPhy’s generative AI supports the critical functions that drive drug development, such as clinical operations, regulatory affairs, and quality assurance.

The company is currently in pilot and commercial agreements with several leading pharmaceutical companies. It has raised $4.5 million in funding from Chelsea Clinton and Caroline Kassie’s Metrodora Ventures, Audere Capital, and TRCM, and prominent figures in the life sciences sector, including Jeff Marrazzo, co-founder and former CEO of Spark Therapeutics – which Roche recently acquired for nearly $5 billion.

BioPhy was co-founded by Dave Latshaw II, Ph.D., MBA – a computational biomolecular and chemical engineer by training. Most recently led the deployment of more than 20 programs that utilized AI across several drug development functions at Johnson & Johnson’s Advanced Technologies Center of Excellence. This impacted $16 billion in yearly sales, reducing costs by 20% and increasing reliability by 50%. The World Economic Forum, McKinsey & Company, and the National Academy of Engineering have recognized his work.

The company works with several leading pharmaceutical and life science companies, including innovators like Ambrose Healthcare, a specialist in rare diseases, to identify the most promising target/drug opportunities and design their clinical trials. And these organizations partner with BioPhy because its platform delivers 80 percent accuracy in predicting and guiding clinical trial success across all endpoints and phases – achieving insights that have historically taken months or years to be delivered within a few days. Its expanding AI operating system for drug development currently consists of two products:

1.) BioPhyRx – A generative AI solution designed to create a centralized, intuitive environment for accessing scientific and regulatory resources. Using large language models, this platform helps pharmaceutical companies in all stages of development by analyzing and interpreting scientific literature, clinical trials, regulatory guidelines and submissions, quality assurance documents, and other industry-specific sources to provide accurate and up-to-date information on demand.

2.) BioLogicAI – A predictive AI engine that provides customized insights to aid life science companies through all stages of the drug development process, including clinical trial endpoint predictability, indication selection, licensing, drug repurposing, asset acquisitions, and divestment. BioLogicAI also benchmarks the biological feasibility of preclinical assets against those in development or already approved by the FDA.

BioPhy is currently working with organizations across life sciences, U.S. government and intelligence agencies, financial services, and the public sector to help them navigate the world of drug development and regulatory compliance.

KEY QUOTES:

“Working inside the four walls of a major pharmaceutical company, I experienced first-hand how AI can be leveraged to solve the inefficiencies that come with functions supporting drug development, including R&D, Search and Evaluation, Quality, and Regulatory. Biotechnology organizations are manually combing through scientific literature, conducting lab experiments, and using traditional statistical analysis to identify promising compounds. Inefficiencies like these in drug development mean that billions of dollars are wasted every year by even the world’s leading companies, tragically resulting in significant delays that cost lives and fewer therapies reaching patients in need. That’s why we designed BioPhy’s platform, which harnesses the power of predictive and generative AI to dramatically increase the likelihood of clinical success, improve capital efficiency and decrease development timelines for pharmaceutical companies, government agencies, and more.”

– Dave Latshaw II, PhD, CEO and Co-Founder of BioPhy

“If there’s anything we learned from the past few years amid a global pandemic and a slew of new illnesses that have come from it, it is that the need to bring drugs to market – quickly and effectively – has never been greater. In fact, research shows that with just a 10 percent improvement in the success rates of clinical trials from AI is predicted to lead to an additional 250 novel therapies over the next 10 years. I’m excited to partner with Dave and the BioPhy team, who are dedicated to turning this prediction into a reality.”

– Caroline Kassie, Managing Partner at Metrodora Ventures