London-based Peptone, a startup that helps pharmaceutical companies unravel the secrets of proteins, announced that it has raised $40M (approximately €38.29M) in its Series A round of funding.
The round was led by F-Prime Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Walden Catalyst Ventures. Existing investors Hoxton Ventures and dRX Capital, the venture arm of Novartis, also participated in this round.
The company says that the proceeds will help develop a facility dedicated to solving complex and problematic intrinsically disordered protein structures at scale, pioneering a new class of potential therapeutic targets and drugs.
About Peptone
Peptone was born out of 30 years of combined academic research into Intrinsically Disordered Proteins at Cambridge, Oxford, ETH Zurich, and the University of Groningen (Netherlands).
Half of the proteins in the human body, including many that are important for health and illness, include certain areas that do not fold neatly into stable structures and hence cannot be predicted reliably from the genetic sequences. Many medication development initiatives fail because they aim strictly planned medicines at these disordered targets due to a lack of information.
Peptone, which claims to be a pioneer in drug discovery, is tackling the problem of biopharmaceutical research and development. The company uses atom-level physical protein analysis techniques to build an accurate picture of disordered proteins and protein areas, predicting the best approach to target them with medications. It uses a combination of NMR spectroscopy and hydrogen-exchange mass spectrometry (HDX-MS), as well as machine learning (ML) and supercomputing, to conduct its research.
In a statement, the company says, “By bringing these proprietary approaches together, we are exploring the world of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) – proteins without a fixed structure that play a significant role in health and disease – opening up the possibility of novel therapeutics against an entire class of the high value and previously undruggable targets.”
Peptone’s technology has been tested through partnerships with major pharmaceutical companies, helping them progress formerly ‘misbehaving’ protein-based drugs against partially disordered targets through the development pipeline.
Capital utilisation
Peptone will use the funds to build a research facility in Bellinzona, a biotechnology cluster in the south of Switzerland, bringing together their atomistic experiments and supercomputing technology.
From there, the company aims to initiate its own pipeline of targets in a range of diseases, including inflammation, cancer and diabetes, and begin experimenting with a novel class of medicines — structurally dynamic drugs based on disordered proteins.
Additionally, the funds will support Peptone’s algorithmic engine, which runs on a supercomputer built in exclusive collaboration with NVIDIA in Keflavik, Iceland, and is powered by 100 per cent geothermal and hydroelectric renewable energy.
Co-founder of Peptone, Kamil Tamiola, says, “Disordered proteins operate right at the point where physics becomes biology. By taking a rigorous and computer-driven experimental physics approach to analysing proteins, we can go beyond classical drug discovery approaches and observe protein behaviour that algorithms like AlphaFold cannot. This new funding will allow us to further advance our platform and support the investigation of the disordered protein universe towards developing drugs of the future.”
About the investors
F-Prime Capital is a global VC firm that backs healthcare and technology companies. With over $3B under management, F-Prime has invested in more than 200 companies. The firm’s portfolio companies have seen more than 30 products and drugs approved by regulatory agencies worldwide.
Another investor in Peptone is Bessemer Venture Partners. It claims to help entrepreneurs lay strong foundations to build and forge long-standing companies. With more than 135 IPOs and 200 portfolio companies in the enterprise, consumer and healthcare spaces, Bessemer supports founders and CEOs from their early days through every stage of growth. The firm has $19B of assets under management.
Andrew Hedin, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, says, “As part of our biotech practice, we’ve been studying the intersection of ML-based drug discovery for several years, and Peptone’s approach immediately stood out. Their computational physics-based Oppenheimer platform is uniquely suited to understanding the structural dynamics of these difficult-to-drug disordered proteins, which allows them to develop therapies against these important disease-causing proteins. We believe that Peptone’s technology has vast potential to create many proprietary therapeutics to treat diseases with significant need, as well as to partner on co-development opportunities given their impressive proof-of-concept work.”
Venture capital firm Walden Catalyst helps early-stage companies in the US, Europe, and Israel build the next generation of category-defining businesses in deeptech. The firm is led by Young Sohn and Lip-Bu Tan, deeptech industry pioneers who, between them, have invested in more than 560 startups across the globe, of which 124 have gone on to IPO.
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