Unnatural Products – a biotech company pairing AI with chemistry to usher in the next generation of molecularly targeted therapeutics – recently announced $32 million in Series A funding, led by Merck Global Health Innovation Fund (MGHIF) and TechBio-focused ARTIS Ventures. And other new investors include First Spark Ventures, The Venture Collective, Humain Ventures, LongeVC, and Not Boring Capital, along with participation from existing investors. The funding will advance the development of UNP’s technology platform and expand the company’s focus beyond oncology into new opportunities. In connection with the funding round, Prem Tumkosit, Managing Director of Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, has joined UNP’s board of directors.
Macrocycles and cyclic peptides provide an opportunity to expand the druggable genome radically. And naturally derived macrocycles have been used as medicines across a variety of indications for decades. The larger size and favorable drug-like properties enable macrocycles to hit intracellular targets too complex for small molecules and replicate the potency and selectivity of antibodies in an oral dosage form.
To address the panoply of targets that were entirely off limits to previous approaches or have only yielded to injectable antibody and biologic strategies, UNP utilizes a parallel chemistry and AI-driven platform that imbues targeted and designed synthetic macrocycles with a favorable drug-likeness of evolved macrocycles found in nature.
KEY QUOTES;
“We’re very fortunate to have the support from MGHIF and ARTIS and great new investors added to the roster in this round. This underlines our team’s hard work building a platform to accelerate this burgeoning molecular class. Macrocycles are today where antibody therapeutics were a couple of decades ago. We finally have the technologies to rapidly and reproducibly find and optimize macrocycles against any given target. I believe macrocycles will be as impactful to the pharmaceutical industry as the biologics revolution of the early 2000s.”
- Cameron Pye, CEO and Co-Founder
“We look to partner with ‘next horizon’ technologies with the potential to impact patient care. We invest in the future of drug development by attempting to solve key technical challenges, opening up a world of possibilities that will only lead to better, more targeted solutions for patients suffering from a myriad of conditions.”
- Prem Tumkosit, Managing Director of MGHIF
“Macrocycles can be the best of both worlds – combining the binding and delivery of peptides with the oral delivery of small molecules. We have always maintained that UNP’s unique approach combining machine learning with chemistry holds the key to hugely impact drug development for many conditions. We are confident their efforts hold the potential to make a difference in the lives of many.”
- Vasudev Bailey, PhD, Managing Partner at ARTIS Ventures
