An artificial intelligence-powered drug discovery company has raised $3.3 million to advance it work designing new therapeutic proteins.
Malvern-based 20n Bio's seed funding round was led by BlueRun Ventures in China.
The company plans to use the proceeds from the equity financing to expand its scientific team and its discovery platform, and to start multiple early studies in oncology and other genetic diseases.
Mingfu Zhu founded 20n Bio in September. The company's mission is to use computer modeling and simulation to generate new protein drugs with desired properties to address unmet medical needs.
"The successful development of Covid-19 vaccines by BioNTech and Moderna demonstrates the great potential of mRNA therapeutics," Zhu said. "In addition to mRNA vaccines for infectious diseases and cancer, there is substantial interest in developing mRNA-encoded proteins as drugs."
Zhu said 20n Bio will focus on designing novel mRNA-encoded proteins that can be used as therapeutics. "We have assembled an experienced team in antibody development, computation biology, molecule biology, and RNA biology to achieve our goals," he said.
Zhu is also the founding CEO of Panorama Medicine, a Bala Cynwyd company that is combining genomics, the study of genes and their functions, and computing-powered drug discovery to develop therapeutic interventions for ribonucleic acid defects in disease.
He was previously an executive with two Chinese genomics and gene sequencing companies, and was also formerly an assistant professor at Duke University Medical Center.
BlueRun Ventures Managing Director Terry Zhu said his firm believes 20n Bio's AI-powered protein design platform holds "tremendous promise" in its potential ability to find effective treatments for a wide range of diseases.
