Inductive Bio, a technology company developing a machine learning (ML) platform designed to dramatically accelerate the compound optimization process, emerged from stealth with $4.3M in funding. Their seed round was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Bio + Health and Lux Capital, with participation from Character, Bessemer Venture Partners, Alleycorp, and others.
Half of the time and money spent in small molecule preclinical drug discovery is focused on optimizing compounds to effectively balance potency with Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism, Excretion, and Toxicity (ADMET) properties. Inductive’s platform maps the drivers of small molecule ADMET by pairing a proprietary dataset with state-of-the-art ML, helping scientists to optimize initial compounds into leads and development candidates faster and with a better balance of ADMET properties.
Inductive Bio was co-founded by Josh Haimson and Ben Birnbaum who had previously built out the ML organization at Flatiron Health, which was acquired by Roche in 2018. “We set our sights on compound optimization after talking to dozens of medicinal chemists who all described this process as a complex game of ‘whack-a-mole’ with dramatic consequences for the success or failure of drug programs,” said Josh Haimson, co-founder and CEO of Inductive Bio. “From our experience at Flatiron and Google, we knew it would be possible to help chemists leverage vast quantities of data to make better decisions.”
“Our deep graph learning algorithms have been tailored to the specific needs of real-world, heterogeneous data and trained on the world’s best-curated ADMET dataset,” said Ben Birnbaum, Ph.D., co-founder and CTO of Inductive Bio. “Traditional QSAR approaches make accurate predictions in novel chemotypes only around 30% of the time, whereas our algorithms are predicting accurately across 80% of novel chemotypes, and that number is continuing to improve as our data set grows.”
Wendy Young, Ph.D., a life sciences senior executive and former SVP of small molecule discovery at Genentech, where she oversaw the discovery and progression of more than 25 clinical candidates into development, joined Inductive’s advisory board in the summer of 2022. “When we were building out the small molecule discovery organization at Genentech, I pushed for our teams to leverage earlier generations of ML because I saw how impactful they were for focusing our resources on the experiments with the highest chance of success in the lab,” said Dr. Young. “I’m excited that at Inductive, we’re building the next-generation technology that the entire biopharma industry can tap into.”
One of Inductive’s early partners is Denali Therapeutics, who is leveraging Inductive’s ML capabilities for ADME property predictions. Denali has integrated custom ADME models from Inductive into their small molecule drug design platform to support rapid, data-driven decision making.
Ankit Mahadevia, M.D., a serial biotech entrepreneur, former Venture partner at Atlas Ventures, and co-founder of nine therapeutics companies, also joined Inductive’s advisory board. “Having launched and run many biotech companies in my career, I’ve seen the pain of compound optimization first hand – years of intuition-driven science and millions of dollars spent to find one or two compounds that have the right balance of potency and ADMET,” said Dr. Mahadevia. “When I learned about the platform Inductive is making available to the biopharma industry I was excited to get involved because I know how much this will accelerate our industry’s ability to bring safer and more effective therapies to patients.”
SOURCE: PRNewswire
