Engine Biosciences, a Singapore- and Redwood City, CA-based company leveraging machine learning and biology to discover and develop precision oncology medicines, raised $27M in Series A extension.
The round, which brought the total amount to date to $86M, was led by Polaris Partners with participation from ClavystBio, Invus, and EDBI, as well as new investors Coronet Ventures and SEEDS Capital. In conjunction with the financing, Wen Qi Ho Ph.D., Therapeutics Lead at ClavystBio, joined Engine’s Board of Directors.
The company intends to use the funds to support translation of R&D programs derived from the proprietary NetMAPPR machine learning network biology platform and CombiGEM combinatorial genetics system into clinical settings.
Led by CEO Jeffrey Lu, Engine Biosciences is advancing its pipeline of oncology therapeutics towards the clinic internally and with collaborators, and in other disease areas through partnerships. Its precision medicine R&D platform deciphers biological networks and pinpoints key genetic interactions driving diseases, overcoming challenges presented by biological complexity. These insights reveal targets and therapeutics to be used in biomarker-defined patient populations, allowing for more rapid identification of effective precision medicines. In oncology, Engine leverages the validated principle of synthetic lethality and is focused on the clinical translation of therapeutics and biomarkers across solid tumors, including ovarian, colorectal, liver, lung and prostate cancers. Among its oncology pipeline is ENB-812, which Engine has overseen from independently discovering PKMYT1 as a synthetic lethal target with novel biomarkers in 2019, generating robust preclinical proof-of-concept across many tumor types and animal models, observing supportive clinical data, and advancing lead identification and optimization.
Its proprietary platforms, NetMAPPR (machine learning-enabled network biology) and CombiGEM (combinatorial genetics experimentation), are engineered for drug hunters and clinical developers to discover and optimize precision medicines. In addition to high-value targets with associated biomarker-defined patient populations, Engine’s extensive biology knowledge and datasets provide insights on desirable target product profile characteristics, guiding design and optimization of first-in-class and best-in-class therapeutics.
FinSMEs
31/10/2023