Enveda Biosciences, a biotechnology company using AI to translate nature into new medicines, announced a new financing round of $55 million to add to its $119 million combined Series B and B1. New investors Premji Invest, Lingotto Investment Fund, Microsoft, and The Nature Conservancy participated in the round alongside existing investors Kinnevik, True Ventures, FPV, Level Ventures, and Jazz Venture Partners.
Enveda is a drug discovery and development company using the latest AI-powered technologies to translate nature into new medicines. The company’s proprietary platform solves – for the first time at scale – the long-standing obstacles in natural product drug discovery including active molecule identification, property and structure prioritization, amenability to medicinal chemistry, and large-scale material access.
This new funding will be used to support further development of Enveda’s breakthrough platform, which recently led to the nomination of a sixth New Chemical Entity (NCE) Development Candidate, and parallel Phase I clinical development of Enveda’s top 3 lead programs, which are slated to enter clinical trials later in 2024 and early 2025. Enveda’s lead program for atopic dermatitis is a novel oral first-in-class anti-inflammatory agent that has demonstrated remarkable efficacy and high safety margins in preclinical studies. Close on its heels is another novel first-in-class anti-inflammatory that inhibits multiple cytokine signaling cascades in the gut to achieve robust efficacy in models of inflammatory bowel disease.
“At Premji Invest, we seek to partner with exceptional teams to build companies that can create long-term value. We are excited by Enveda’s potential to deliver new, safe and efficacious treatments for complex conditions, pushing the boundaries of AI and ML in life sciences,” said Sandesh Patnam, Managing Partner at Premji Invest. “Enveda has made significant progress in creating a platform that learns from the diversity in natural chemistry and is able to translate this knowledge to develop novel therapeutics. We look forward to the new discoveries which can bring hope to millions of patients worldwide.”
“We’re proud to support Enveda as we see its potential for long-term, open-ended growth due to the broad utility of their technology for solving some of the toughest challenges facing human and planetary health,” says Morgan Samet, Partner and Co-Head – Lingotto Investment Management. “Viswa is the type of founder we are excited to back, given his resourcefulness, tenacity, and vision.”
“The investors who joined in this round recognize our rapid progress, as well as our expansive potential and vision,” says Viswa Colluru, Ph.D., CEO and Founder of Enveda. “In combination with our deep bench of top tier investors, we are in an ideal position to advance our novel medicines into the clinic and to bring hope to waiting patients.”
SOURCE: Businesswire