Precision medicine startup Promise Bio announced that it has emerged from stealth with an $8.3 million seed investment.

Awz Ventures led the round with funding from AION Lab's venture seeding track from AstraZeneca and Pfizer, which provided Promise Bio with financial backing to accelerate the development of its platform. 

In addition to the funding, the company received a grant from the Israel Innovation Authority, which Promise Bio said would strengthen its ability to scale its cutting-edge technology and expand its research capabilities.

WHAT IT DOES

Promise Bio offers a cloud-based platform that performs epiproteomic analysis for precision medicine pertaining to complex chronic conditions, including autoimmune diseases. 

Epiproteomics is the study of post-translational modifications (PTMs) to proteins in a cell or organism. 

The company is focused on transforming the management of immune-mediated diseases through epiproteomics and artificial intelligence. 

The company is built on groundbreaking research from the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Promise Bio evaluates proteins and their PTMs with exceptional precision. 

In addition, the proprietary technology allows for large-scale PTM profiling, aiding researchers in uncovering disease mechanisms, tailoring therapies and discovering new drug targets.

The company will use the funds to accelerate the development of its computational platform, which uses epiproteomics and artificial intelligence to predict patient treatment responses and support drug research and development.

MARKET SNAPSHOT

In October, AION Labs launched ProPhet, a startup using artificial intelligence to locate small molecules for drug discovery. ProPhet was established after AION Labs' startup challenge focused on AI-powered drug discovery of new high-affinity small molecules. 

The aim was to address the market need to speed up, refine and enhance the early stages of drug discovery by focusing on proteins that are challenging because of finite information while at the same time substantially lowering the time and cost of identifying potential drug candidates for these targets.

In March, Promise Bio, a portfolio company of AION Labs, launched a new startup company CombineAble.AI, which is designed to speed up the development of therapeutics by addressing challenges associated with antibody design. 

CombinAble.AI was formed following an AION Labs startup challenge aimed at developing an AI-based solution for therapeutic antibodies. The company develops a platform that integrates AI with computational methods for biomolecule simulations aimed at developing new biotherapeutics.  

In 2023, AION Labs launched its second startup, DenovAI. DenovAI develops an AI-enabled computational biophysics platform that can discover potential antibodies targeting specific epitopes (the part of an antigen molecule recognized by the immune system to which an antibody attaches itself). The platform designs antibodies from scratch, then suggests which candidates will likely make successful drugs.