20n Bio, a Malvern, Pa.-based artificial intelligence (AI)-powered drug discovery company focusing on designing new proteins for therapeutics, raised $3.3m in seed funding.
The round was led by BlueRun Ventures China.
The company will use the funds to expand its scientific team, establish its discovery platform, and start multiple early studies in oncology and other genetic diseases.
Founded by Dr. Mingfu Zhu in September 2021 with its lab in Malvern, PA. Prior to 20n, 20n Bio is dedicated to the computational design of novel protein therapeutics. Launched in 2021, the company aims to address unmet medical needs by leveraging artificial intelligence to generate protein drugs in silico with desired biophysical, functional, and pharmacological properties.
20n plans to quickly expand its current team of five full-time Ph.D.-level employees by hiring more computational protein engineers and RNA biologists. The company recently added two computational structural biologists Dr. Yaoqi Zhou at Shenzhen Bay Laboratory, and Dr. Longxing Cao at Westlake University who is a finalist of the MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35 Asia Pacific 2021 to its Scientific Advisory Board.
Dr. Zhu was an assistant professor at Duke University Medical Center and held multiple executive roles at leading US and Chinese biotech companies. He is an expert in computational genomics and co-founded several artificial AI-powered biotech companies in drug discovery and cancer diagnostics.
FinSMEs
20/12/2021