Talus Bioscience, a drug discovery company founded by a world-class team of scientific leaders in proteomics, biochemistry, and machine learning, announced $11.2M in new venture funding. The Seed+ round was led by Two Bear Capital, with participation from WRF Capital, NFX, YC Continuity Fund, Funders Club VC, and BoxOne Ventures.
The funding will be invested to advance Talus Bio’s therapeutic programs, which include Brachyury-driven cancers and an undruggable transcription factor implicated in prostate cancer. It will also accelerate the expansion of the company’s proprietary Multiplexed Assays for the Rational Modulation Of Transcription Factors (MARMOT) platform.
MARMOT leverages new AI models trained on Talus Bio’s dataset for transcription factor activity, currently the largest in the world. MARMOT allows scientists to rapidly identify optimal candidates from billions of compounds, replacing time-consuming high-throughput screens, which have historically failed for transcription factors and are limited to millions of compounds. With MARMOT, machine learning models discover and optimize modulators for any given transcription factor target, enabling the massive acceleration of discovery screening in live, unmodified human cells where targets fold and function properly.
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“This new funding from our exceptional partners validates and supports our work producing the first AI model to discover and optimize new modulators of any transcription factor,” said Talus Bioscience CEO and Co-Founder Alex Federation, PhD. “With our growing team of leading data scientists, we can use tens of millions of data points generated from the MARMOT platform to predict the best places to look for new molecules to block disease-causing transcription factors. We’re just getting started as we source new partners to help advance the dozens of promising transcription factor candidates we have discovered to date.”
Transcription factors are proteins that regulate the genome by binding to DNA and orchestrating which genes are turned on or off at any given time. When they go awry, they often drive cancer and other disease processes like diabetes, inflammatory diseases, fibrosis, and neurological conditions.
“Talus Bio’s platform incorporates advances in chemistry, proteomics and computational biology to generate a dataset that was previously impossible. The scale, comprehensiveness, and efficiency with which they can target transcription factors gives their AI approach a distinct advantage and has already generated a robust list of hits against attractive drug targets,” said Avery Sonnenberg, PhD, Principal at lead investor Two Bear Capital. “We’re thrilled to be working with this exceptional team as they pursue both partnerships and internal development of these exciting programs which have the potential to redefine how we treat complex diseases and improve patient outcomes globally.”
Source: Businesswire