Artificial intelligence (AI)-based drug developer Isomorphic Labs said it has raised $600 million in its first external funding round, with the proceeds expected to accelerate its research and development efforts and advance its next-generation AI drug design engine.
As a result, Isomorphic Labs said, it expects to expand its staff, adding top-tier talent as part of its next phase of growth.
Isomorphic Labs founder and CEO, Sir Demis Hassabis, PhD
“This funding will further turbocharge the development of our next-generation AI drug design engine, help us advance our own programs into clinical development, and is a significant step forward towards our mission of one day solving all disease with the help of AI,” Isomorphic Labs founder and CEO, Sir Demis Hassabis, PhD, said in a statement.
Speaking with The New York Times, Hassabis added: “This is the No. 1 most beneficial application of AI out there.”
Isomorphic Labs was founded to develop treatments for millions of patients worldwide by applying AI toward reimagining and accelerating drug discovery. Its scientific advisory board includes notables such as Nobel laureate and CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna, PhD, and Sir Menelas (Mene) Pangalos, PhD, a former executive vice president at AstraZeneca.
Isomorphic Labs says it is advancing drug design programs across multiple therapeutic areas and drug modalities. These include oncology and immunology, the primary focuses of Isomorphic Labs’ internal programs. The company’s drug discovery portfolio also includes small molecule programs being developed through collaborations with Eli Lilly ($45 million upfront, up to $1.7 billion in milestones, plus royalties to develop “multiple” targets) and Novartis ($37.5 million upfront, up to $1.2 billion in milestones, plus royalties to develop three targets).
Last month, Novartis and Isomorphic Labs agreed to add three additional programs to their collaboration, on the same financial terms as the original agreement.
“We’ve built a multi-disciplinary drug design team including medicinal chemists, computational chemists, and biologists, working alongside machine learning researchers, machine learning engineers, and software developers,” Pascal Savy, PhD, a research leader in Isomorphic Labs’ Drug Design and Medical Research (DDMR) team, wrote on the company’s blog July 30, 2024*.*
Sharing knowledge, building models
“Our culture places great emphasis on knowledge sharing between disciplines, fostering a culture of cross-pollination of ideas. We also believe that in order to answer some of the most challenging questions about disease treatment and human health, we have to build a range of predictive and generative models that can support the work of our scientists across multiple expertise,” Savy added.
London-based Isomorphic Labs spun out from Google DeepMind, a research subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet. DeepMind was acquired in 2014 by Google, which reorganized a year later into a subsidiary of Alphabet.
Last year, Isomorphic Labs partnered with Google DeepMind to release an updated version of DeepMind’s protein structure prediction algorithm AlphaFold, which gained world renown through the grand leap it made toward determining a protein’s 3D structure from its sequence, a longtime challenge from basic biology to drug discovery.
But in a study published in Nature unveiling AlphaFold 3’s expanded predictive capabilities—from proteins to a broad spectrum of biomolecular interactions, including DNA, RNA, ligands, and more—Isomorphic Labs and DeepMind did not initially make available the open source code, sparking outcry from the research community that culminated in a protest letter signed by more than 1,000 scientists.
DeepMind has since released the model code and weights and released an updated version of AlphaFold3, v3.0.1, on January 23.
Thrive Capital led the financing round, with participation from GV, founded in 2009 as Google Ventures, and follow-on capital from Alphabet, an existing investor.
“We believe Isomorphic has earned a rare position to define a new age of drug discovery and design, and we are deeply inspired by their mission and the extraordinary progress they have made to date,” stated Joshua Kushner, founder and CEO of Thrive Capital. Thrive led the $6.6 billion funding round of ChatGPT developer OpenAI last year with an investment reported at about $1.3 billion.
Added Krishna Yeshwant, managing partner at GV: “After witnessing the extraordinary pace of innovation at Isomorphic Labs, we believe their pioneering approach will redefine AI-powered drug discovery.”