A new company in Durham aims to accelerate the drug discovery process.
Avicenna Biosciences recently emerged with more than $14 million raised and a machine learning-driven technology platform designed to tackle some of the key challenges in drug development.
The company was founded by Chief Scientific Officer Thomas Kaiser and Vice President of Informatics Pieter Burger, who met while working at the Liotta Research Group at Emory University. Together, Kaiser and Burger began working on new techniques to address the challenges and difficulties of finding new drugs.
"The problem we're trying to solve is: it's really hard to find new drugs," Kaiser said.
Kaiser and Burger in 2020 formed Avicenna with CEO Christopher Meldrum, an entrepreneur-in-residence at DCVC Bio, a California-based venture capital firm. The company has raised $14.5 million since its formation, with DCVC Bio serving as the primary investor.
Avicenna has remained stealthy over the past few years until recently following the publication of a paper in the Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling that showed the company's technology can be used to accelerate the lead optimization process in drug discovery. This is the final stage of drug discovery, during which researchers identify lead drug candidates to advance further into development.
Avicenna has developed a machine learning-driven medicinal chemistry platform intended to make the process of identifying lead drug candidates faster, cheaper and more successful. Using its technology the company was able to advance one of its lead drug programs from an idea to proof of concept in nine months, Meldrum said. This shortened a process that can typically take up to two or three years.
The company is not just focused on accelerating the timeline, but also increasing the chances of success. Using its technology, Avicenna can look for ways to address where a compound may have previously fallen short to design a development candidate that could be moved forward into further studies.
"Not only can we go faster, but we can find things that were left on the table," Kaiser said. "Valuable things with great potential."
Avicenna has set up operations at an office space in Downtown Durham and has a small laboratory at BioLabs North Carolina in downtown. Meldrum — who has been based in the Triangle for more than 20 years — said the company chose the Triangle as it provides nearly all of the benefits of Boston and the Bay Area — like a talented workforce — without the high prices associated with those markets.
The company has 12 employees, about two-thirds of whom are based in the Triangle. Meldrum said the company could look to add a few employees in 2025 as it begins moving assets toward the clinic.
Avicenna is advancing its own pipeline of assets, including initial programs it hopes to move into clinical trials next year. The company's initial efforts are on neurodegenerative conditions and renal disease, but it is not limited to these indications. Meldrum said the technology can work in disease indications that can be targeted by small molecule drugs.
While the company's focus is on advancing its own pipeline, Avicenna also plans to use its platform to pursue partnerships with other pharma and biotech firms.
The funding Avicenna has raised so far has been spread out over the past few years, including a 2022 seed round that DCVC Bio led. Meldrum said the company is likely to pursue a Series A raise this year to give the company additional capital prior to initiating its clinical work.
