Chicago AI drug discovery startup Evozyne raises $81M in bid to make new proteins

Chicago startup Evozyne has raised $81 million following a generative AI collaboration with Nvidia announced earlier this year.

The three-year-old startup is creating new proteins to use for therapeutics and carbon capture and has already partnered with Takeda. Evozyne announced in April 2022 that it would help create proteins for the Japanese pharma to potentially use in gene therapies, spanning up to four rare disease targets. But it’s also looking to develop its own programs.

The Series B investors, disclosed Wednesday afternoon, are OrbiMed, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Paragon Biosciences, Valor Equity Partners and the venture arm of Nvidia, with whom Evozyne teamed up to build an AI model for designing therapeutic proteins. A computational and software behemoth, Nvidia became a trillion-dollar company this year thanks to the AI revolution, and it has also pumped money into other AI players in the biotech industry, including $50 million for Recursion in July.

Mike Gamson

“Our next three years will be tightly focused on maximizing our generative AI platform for drug development and carbon capture, while we develop a portfolio of gene editors and enzymes that modulate immune response,” Evozyne CEO Mike Gamson said in a press release. Gamson joined earlier this year from the same role at Relativity, a Chicago software company serving legal, financial and government customers.

The financing, which adds to a nearly $60 million Series A in 2021, will go toward “product development and potential IND-enabling studies,” OrbiMed general partner Matthew Rizzo said in a statement.

On its website, Evozyne says it’s working in the area of IgG antibodies, which contribute to chronic autoimmune diseases, as well as developing more specific CRISPR/Cas nucleases than the existing generation, hoping to get into more areas of the genome.

Rama Ranganathan

University of Chicago professors Rama Ranganathan and Andrew Ferguson co-founded the company with the initial help of Paragon Biosciences, a local incubator from Jeff Aronin. The investor has also backed Castle Creek, CiRC, Emalex, Harmony and Skyline, with the latter shutting down last year.

“The basic platform involves a significant computational, algorithmic front-end where we make models for the way that nature builds these protein molecules and then we use those models to generate new solutions that we then actually at Evozyne produce and make all the experimental measurements,” Ranganathan previously told Endpoints News.

In recent months, it hired former Fresh Tracks Therapeutics VP Uri Herzberg as chief drug discovery officer, per his LinkedIn profile. Last month, a few employees across research, product management and executive assistant roles had posted to LinkedIn saying the startup had gone through downsizing and layoffs.

Evozyne is one of many life sciences startups touting the potential of AI in next-generation drug discovery and development, including hometown neighbor Pathos, as well as others like Recursion, Isomorphic Labs, Atomwise and Exscientia.

therapeutics
antibodies
crispr
biotech
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life sciences