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Isomorphic Labs, a British company developing new ways to design and develop medicines, said Monday it raised $600 million to advance its artificial intelligence technology.
Isomorphic claims its AI platforms will help maximize laboratory scientists’ time by powering some of the tedious legwork involved in drug candidate research. It's also developing an internal drug pipeline focused on cancer and autoimmune diseases.
The company, which is led and founded by Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, was built upon the foundation of DeepMind’s AlphaFold software, which uses machine learning to predict the structure of proteins. Last year, Isomorphic launched a new iteration of AlphaFold that can predict the structure of DNA and RNA, as well as ligands capable of binding to target proteins.
“This funding will further turbocharge the development of our next-generation AI drug design engine, help us advance our own programs into clinical development, and is a significant step forward towards our mission of one day solving all disease with the help of AI,” Hassabis said in a statement.
Hassabis was one of the three winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024 for his work on protein prediction.
Tech venture investor Thrive Capital led the financing round, which also included GV and Alphabet, Google’s parent company. Isomorphic previously raised £182 million via a stock issuance to Alphabet last August.
Isomorphic inked collaborations with Eli Lilly and Novartis in January 2024 aimed at finding new small molecules. The deals brought in more than $82 million in upfront payments to the British company.
“This collaboration harnesses our companies’ unique strengths, from AI and data science to medicinal chemistry and deep disease area expertise, to realize new possibilities in AI-driven drug discovery,” Fiona Marshall, head of biomedical research at Novartis, said in a statement at the time.
Novartis has been an active dealmaker in AI in recent years, also signing deals with Microsoft and Generate:Biomedicines. Last month, the pharma giant expanded its deal with Isomorphic by adding three more research programs to the collaboration.
“With any of these new technologies, you get early adopters, a lot of excitement,” Marshall told BioPharma Dive in January. “We're in the AI peak at the moment.”
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