Seismic Therapeutic Secures $121 Million Series B Financing to Advance AI-Driven Immunology Pipeline

Dec 05, 2023 18:02 CST Updated 18:02

Seismic Therapeutic

Immunotherapy Developer

Bessemer Venture Partners

Venture Capital Firms

Amgen Ventures

A venture capital firm based in California

Codon Capital

Early-Stage Venture Capital Firms

Alexandria Venture Investments

Healthcare Venture Capital Firms

Gaingels

Venture Capital Firms

GC&H Investments

Venture Capital Firms

Lightspeed Venture Partners

Venture Capital Firms

Polaris Partners

Venture Capital Firms in Digital Media, Life Sciences, and Enterprise Software

Boxer Capital

Venture Capital Firms

GV

Google's Investment Fund

Samsara BioCapital

Venture Capital Firms

On December 4, according to foreign media Fierce Biotech reports, Seismic TherapeuticRaised $121 Million in Series B, which will be used to advance its two lead drugs through early clinical testing.

Series B financing was led by new investor Bessemer Venture Partners.Amgen VenturesCodon Capital, Alexandria Venture Investments, Gaingels, and GC&H participated in the investment. Existing investors Timothy A. Springer, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Polaris Partners, Boxer Capital, GV, Samsara BioCapital, as well as unnamed management members and founders, also joined.

This round of financing was carried out in 2022.$101 Million Series AFollowing the financing, Seismic Therapeutic, Inc. has raised a total of $222 million.

IMAPCT (ML) Platform

Seismic Therapeutic, Inc. is based on itsIMAPCT Machine Learning (ML) PlatformDevelop a series of biologics for treating immune diseases。

Traditional protein identification and optimization involve inefficient, independent sequential iterations and lengthy combinatorial steps.

Seismic's IMPACT Platform ThroughIntegrating machine learning with structural biology, protein engineering, and translational immunology, achieving parallel multi-attribute optimization, thereby accelerating the generation of novel biologics.

Fig.: IMAPCT Platform

IMPACT PlatformOpened up new protein sequence space, allowing for the simultaneous optimization of multiple drug properties, including immunogenicity, and reduced the number and duration of design/testing cycles., detailed as follows:

The IMPACT platform can discover previously unexplored sequences and design proteins with optimal drug-like properties.

The IMPACT platform can remove B- and T-cell epitopes from novel biologics, rendering them invisible to the immune system while retaining the drugs' applicability and functionality.

The IMPACT platform supports parallelization, thereby eliminating the loops of multiple iterations and variant combinations, and reducing the time for each loop to quickly identify the best candidates.

IgSc Drug + DcB Drug

SeismicThe R&D plan focuses on two areas,1. Immunoglobulin sculpting enzymes aimed at altering antibody activity associated with diseases, and 2. Bispecific dual-acting antibodies used to enhance immune checkpoint suppression of immune responses.

The funds will be used for the IgSc candidate protein to treat acute and chronic autoantibody-mediated diseases.S-1117And DcB drugs as PD-1 agonistsS-4321。

In addition to the clinical trials of S-1117 and S4321, Seismic will also use the Series B funding to further develop the IMPACT platform and advance the development of more IgSc and DcB drugs.

The company's Series A financing round raised $101 million in early 2022.

Following this financing, Andrew Hedin, a partner at Bessemer’s biotechnology and healthcare division, has been appointed to Seismic Therapeutic's board of directors.

Seismic Therapeutic, Inc. was founded in 2021 by Jo Viney, the founder of Pandion Therapeutics (later acquired by Merck).Founding.

Viney holds a Ph.D. in Immunology from St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College, University of London, and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of East London.

Formerly served as Senior Vice President of Drug Discovery at Biogen, Executive Director of Inflammation Research at Amgen, and board member of Harpoon Therapeutics and Graphite Bio, as well as serving on the boards of several private companies.

Jo VineY stated that the new funding will support the company in "ushering in a new era of immunology drug development integrated with machine learning."

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