Superluminal Medicines joined the ranks of AI-focused biotechs hauling in megarounds, closing an RA Capital-led $120 million Series A, the startup said Monday.
The new funds should be sufficient to advance its first drug program into human testing, CEO Cony D’Cruz told Endpoints News, while also expanding its pipeline beyond six preclinical programs. The Greater Boston-area biotech is researching small molecules that can hit certain types of proteins that reside on the membranes of cells, like G protein-coupled receptors, or GPCRs.
Specifics are being kept under wraps, at least for now. D’Cruz declined to disclose drug targets, therapeutic areas that the company is prioritizing, or when it expects to enter the clinic. But Eli Lilly as a new Series A investor may provide a hint at what’s of interest. The $850 billion drug giant is leading the wave of obesity drugs that target the GLP-1 receptor, a type of GPCR, along with Novo Nordisk.
When asked if the cardiometabolic space is of interest, D’Cruz said he couldn’t confirm or deny. He also wouldn’t say if Superluminal was interested in working on GLP-1, specifically.
But D’Cruz said there is “joint interest” with Lilly in the targets that Superluminal is working on. And he outlined the way its technology could help develop a better oral candidate against GLP-1, particularly in reducing or eliminating side effects by being able to target — or avoid — different shapes or conformations of that protein.
“It’s a challenge that, generally, could be very well-suited to our platform,” he said, adding Superluminal will disclose more info as it gets closer to the clinic.
Other new investors include Catalio Capital Management and Cooley LLP, joining previous backers Insight Partners, Nvidia’s corporate venture arm, and Gaingels. Superluminal publicly launched in August 2023 with $33 million in seed financing.
D’Cruz, formerly the chief business officer for Schrödinger, said Superluminal’s platform allows it to study multiple conformations of a protein and link those different shapes with biological effects. The biotech then virtually screens small molecules to look for candidates that hit a certain shape of a protein, while avoiding other variations. The startup is also developing AI-driven methods to predict possible toxicities for molecules.
The technology uses a mix of the physics-based methods that Schrödinger pioneered and machine learning. Still, D’Cruz said he doesn’t see artificial intelligence as “part of the headline” for Superluminal. The 15-employee company would prefer to adopt and tweak publicly available AI models when possible, building proprietary models only when necessary to fill in gaps in the R&D process.
“We want to develop drugs,” D’Cruz said. “We don’t necessarily want to spend our time developing algorithms.”
While the startup is keeping details on its six drug programs under wraps, D’Cruz said all six are targeting well-established biology that already have injectable peptide drugs as the standard of care. Only one of the six targets has a small molecule currently in the clinic, he said.
“We are going for building a small molecule platform that can address these high-value targets at a very low economical price point,” D’Cruz said.