TandemAI has secured US$22m in a Series A extension to advance its drug discovery platform.
The round, from new and existing investors, takes total funding past US$80m since October 2021.
The platform combines artificial intelligence with physics-based computation and wet-lab work to find potential drug candidates.
The platform has produced more than ten drug candidates that are either in clinical development or preparing to enter clinical trials.
Peter Zhao, managing director at V-Capital, said the company had “successfully executed on its approach to build and commercialise a powerful drug discovery platform by integrating AI and physics-based computational technologies with wet lab techniques.
He added: “With this funding, the company and its outstanding team are well positioned to grow its existing small molecule business and, with the recent merger with Perpetual Medicines, capitalise on the significant emerging opportunities in peptide and antibody-peptide conjugate discovery.”
Small molecules are traditional drugs often taken as pills. Peptides are chains of amino acids.
Antibody-peptide conjugates combine antibodies with peptides to target specific cells.
KHK Fund stated: “AI and advanced physics-based methods are now essential for drug discovery.
“TandemAI’s platform has notably enhanced R&D efficiency and success rates in small molecule and peptide drug discovery, driving rapid growth even during the pharmaceutical market downturn. We are pleased to support the company’s continued growth.”
Jeff He, co-founder and chief executive of TandemAI, said: “The financing is a strong vote of confidence in our progress to date and in our strategy.
“This funding will support AI and computational physics-based model development for multiple modalities, as well as wet lab capacity expansion to accommodate our rapidly growing client base.”
He noted that the merger with Perpetual Medicines brought on board drug developers Kerry Blanchard, MD, PhD, and Ved Srivastava, PhD, enhancing the company’s drug discovery and development capabilities.
The company has developed TandemViz, which it describes as an AI-enabled drug discovery platform integrating computational modules, high-performance computing and data management, linking in-silico work with laboratory experiments.
TandemAI says that in four years it has achieved “10x revenue growth” and gained recognition including inclusion in “Forbes Asia 100 to Watch” and the “Nature Index Global AI Drug Discovery Innovation Landscape”.
