Perpetual Medicines Secures $8 Million Seed Funding to Advance Integrated Computational Design and Automated Synthesis Platform for Next-Generation Peptide Therapeutics

VCBeat has learned at the earliest opportunity,Perpetual Medicines Announces Completion of $8 Million Seed Funding Round to Advance Its Highly Integrated Computational Design and Automated Synthesis Platform for Peptide Drug Discovery. The round was led by Chengwei Capital.

The company also announced the latest appointments to its core leadership team, including Dr. Kerry L. Blanchard (Bo Kerui), Co-founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer; Dr. Ved Srivastava, Chief Technology Officer; and Dr. Ye Xiangsheng, Chief Scientific Officer.

Dr. BlanchardPerpetual Medicines stated: “We are fully leveraging the latest advances in computational models based on artificial intelligence, deep learning, and machine learning to unlock, for the first time, drug discovery within the vast and unexplored chemical space of peptides.” The company has built an integrated platform that uses physics-based computational methods to virtually iterate through millions of peptide sequences, predict their binding affinities and other drug-like properties, and combine these insights with experimental data to identify and optimize drug candidates. This approach is expected to accelerate the pace of peptide drug discovery, reduce R&D costs, and improve the quality of candidate drugs. With this financing round, the company will advance its lead programs into clinical stages and continue to build its preclinical portfolio in oncology, autoimmune diseases, and metabolic disorders.

Dr. Blanchard also pointed out that peptide therapy has become the fastest-growing segment in the pharmaceutical industry, with annual sales projected to exceed $140 billion by 2030. He stated, “Peptide drugs fill the gap between small-molecule drugs and therapeutic antibodies. They offer a larger structural space and sufficient selectivity, making them suitable for blocking protein-protein interactions both inside and outside cells. These characteristics, combined with the vast chemical space accessible to peptides, enable their application to be expanded to a variety of targets and pathological areas previously considered undruggable.”

Perpetual Medicines has assembled a seasoned senior management team whose members collectively possess over 120 years of experience in drug R&D and have successfully spearheaded the development of more than ten marketed peptide drugs.

Senior Management Team:

Dr. Kerry L. Blanchard, Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Blanchard is a seasoned entrepreneur with over 40 years of career experience, during which he has built extensive expertise in R&D leadership and management. He played a pivotal role in the development of four marketed drugs and guided the clinical development and approval of 25 new drugs in China. Additionally, he successfully led the initial public offerings (IPOs) of two biopharmaceutical companies on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. He possesses profound experience in the development of peptide-based therapeutics, ranging from vancomycin and colistin to incretins. Prior to co-founding Perpetual Medicines, Dr. Blanchard accumulated substantial leadership experience in the pharmaceutical industry, serving as Chief Executive Officer of Everest Medicines. Before that, he served as Chief Scientific Officer at Innovent Biologics and held several key R&D positions during his nearly 18-year tenure at Eli Lilly and Company, most recently as Senior Vice President of Drug Development for China. Prior to entering the pharmaceutical industry, he enjoyed a distinguished academic career spanning nearly 20 years at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center and Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Ved Srivastava, Chief Technology Officer

Dr. Srivastava has over 25 years of experience in peptide drug discovery and development. He played a pivotal role in the development of multiple peptide-based therapeutics, including well-known drugs such as Byetta™, Symlin™, and Bydureon™. Prior to joining Perpetual Medicines, he served as Vice President of Peptide Chemistry at Aktis Oncology. Previously, he held the position of Head of Peptide Chemistry at GlaxoSmithKline and Amylin Pharmaceuticals. Additionally, he was a co-founder of Phoundry Pharma and served as Vice President of Chemistry at Intarcia. His leadership and profound influence in the field were further demonstrated by his tenure as President of the American Peptide Society (APS).

Dr. Xiangsheng Ye, Chief Scientific Officer

Dr. Xiangsheng Ye has over 25 years of experience in drug research and development, including more than 22 years at Eli Lilly and Company, where he focused on drug discovery and translational medicine. Throughout his career, he successfully led the discovery and development of eight clinical candidates, including Verzenio® (abemaciclib), a globally approved cancer therapy. Prior to joining Perpetual Medicines, he served as Chief Scientific Officer at Runjia Pharmaceuticals and Yuanli Life Sciences.

Perpetual Medicines is a peptide drug R&D company built on a highly integrated computational design–automated synthesis platform, aiming to construct a next-generation peptide drug discovery engine. The company’s platform combines the predictive power of cutting-edge computational physics methods and next-generation artificial intelligence technologies with advanced synthetic chemistry to explore the vast, untapped peptide chemical space. This platform is designed to address previously undruggable targets and disease areas, accelerate the discovery process, and improve the quality of peptide drug candidates.

Currently, the company maintains operational entities in both Shanghai, China, and Boston, United States.