Xaira Therapeutics, an AI-powered drug discovery and development company, announced its launch with more than $1 billion in capital.
The biotech company is a co-incubation of ARCH Venture Partners and Foresite Labs, the lead investors in the funding round.
Also participating in the round were Lux Capital, Two Sigma Ventures, F-Prime, Rsquared, SV Angel, Menlo Ventures, Sequoia Capital, NEA, Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI), Byers Capital, and Lightspeed Venture Partners .
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Xaira uses machine learning research, data generation models, and therapeutic drug development to create an AI-enabled platform for drug discovery and development across multiple modalities. The focus will be on targets that have traditionally been difficult to treat.
The company is comprised of a group of researchers who have developed RF diffusion models and RF antibody models for protein and antibody design. The research team plans to develop these models to link engineered molecules with biological targets relevant to human disease.
“Growing data sets and new methods are accelerating advances in artificial intelligence and its applications in medicine, biology, and chemistry, including ingenious research from David Baker's lab at the Protein Design Institute. ” said CEO Dr. Vikram Bajaj. Managing Directors of Foresite Labs and Foresite Capital said in a statement:
“In launching Zyla, we have brought together incredible multidisciplinary talent and capabilities at the right time to rethink our entire approach from drug discovery to clinical development.”
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The California-based company is led by CEO Dr. Marc Tessier Lavigne, who previously served as chief scientific officer at Genentech and as president of Rockefeller University. Stanford University.
Tessier-Lavigne resigned from Stanford University last August following controversy over research misconduct related to 12 scientific papers she co-authored.
The university has launched a formal investigation, Although he was not aware of any fraud found in the lab's scientific publications, he concluded that “there may have been opportunities to improve the lab's oversight and management.”
Other members of Xaira's management team include Dr. Hetu Kamisetty, former Meta and co-founder of the Institute for Protein Design; Dr. Arvind Rajpal was involved in polymer drug discovery at Genentech. Dr. Don Kirkpatrick is the former Chief Technology Officer of Interline Therapeutics and former Director of Genentech.
