Seismic Therapeutic, a Cambridge, MA-based machine learning immunology company, raised $121M in Series B funding.
The round, which brought the total amount to $222M, was led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from other new investors, Amgen Ventures, Codon Capital, Alexandria Venture Investments, Gaingels and GC&H, as well as existing investors, Timothy A. Springer, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Polaris Partners, Boxer Capital, GV, Samsara BioCapital, and management and founders. Concurrent with the financing, Andrew Hedin, MBA, biotech and healthcare partner of Bessemer Venture Partners, will join Seismic’s board of directors.
Led by Jo Viney, PhD, Founder, President and CEO, Seismic Therapeutic is a biotechnology company working on how immunology therapies are discovered and developed, enabled by machine learning. It has a growing preclinical stage and biologics pipeline, derived from its integrated IMPACT platform, to control dysregulated adaptive immunity and address multiple autoimmune diseases. It “parallelizes” interdisciplinary components of drug discovery to generate drug molecules on an unprecedented scale that are engineered to be better therapeutics to treat autoimmune diseases. Comprehensive integration of machine learning with protein engineering, structural biology and translational immunology enables the accelerated design and analysis of vast numbers of proteins and protein modifications.
Proceeds from the Series B financing will be used to advance through Phase 1 proof-of-mechanism trials with Seismic’s two lead programs: a pan‑immunoglobulin (Ig) G protease sculpting (Sc) enzyme candidate (S-1117) and a PD-1 agonist:Fc gamma receptor IIb selective Dual-cell Bidirectional (DcB) antibody candidate (S-4321). In addition, the Series B will enable the continued growth of the company’s pipeline in both the IgSc and DcB product areas, beyond the lead programs. The funding will also enable the company to further expand its proprietary machine learning-enabled IMPACT platform with the development and implementation of additional methods to enhance biologics drug discovery in immunology.
FinSMEs
04/12/2023