Seismic Therapeutic, Inc., a Watertown, Mass.-based biotechnology company advancing machine learning for immunology drug development, launched with of $101m in Series A funding.
The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from Timothy A. Springer and Polaris Partners, and new investors GV, Boxer Capital, Samsara BioCapital, and management and founders.
Led by Jo Viney, PhD, Founder, President and CEO, and Alan Crane, Founder and Chairman, Seismic Therapeutic is a biotechnology company integrating machine learning across the entire biologics discovery process to accelerate immunology drug development. Using its IMPACT™ platform, the company is addressing the central challenges of biologics discovery and development by fully integrating machine learning with the key elements of biologics drug discovery – structural biology, protein engineering and translational immunology – to create optimized therapies on an accelerated path to patients. Seismic Therapeutic has an emerging pipeline of novel biologics to address adaptive immune system dysregulation to treat autoimmune diseases.
The company intends to use the funds for further advancement toward the clinic of its first two lead drug programs, one targeting Ig (immunoglobulin)-mediated autoimmunity and the other targeting cell-mediated autoimmunity, and continue to build its proprietary IMPACT platform to make further advancements to machine learning technologies applied to immunology therapeutics.
The Seismic Therapeutic team brings together experienced biotechnology leaders with decades of industry expertise in company building and drug development. Company leadership includes:
- Alan Crane, Founder, Chairman
- Jo Viney, PhD, Founder, President and CEO
- Nathan Higginson-Scott, PhD, Chief Technology Officer and Senior VP Drug Creation
- Kevin Otipoby, PhD, Senior VP Immunology
- Edward Freedman, JD, Chief Financial Officer
- John Sundy, MD, PhD, Incoming Chief Medical Officer and Head of R&D
Academic Founders of Seismic Therapeutic include:
- Timothy Springer, PhD, Latham Family Professor and Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School; and Principal Investigator and Professor of Medicine, Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital
- Debora Marks, MBChB, PhD, Associate Professor of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School
- Jeffrey Ravetch, MD, PhD, the Theresa and Eugene M. Lang Professor and head of the Leonard Wagner Laboratory of Molecular Genetics and Immunology at the Rockefeller University
- Andrew Kruse, PhD, Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School
- Eric Sundberg, PhD, Professor and Chair, Department of Biochemistry, Emory University School of Medicine
FinSMEs
09/02/2022