Advances in generic AI have taken the tech world by storm. Biotech investors are betting big that similar computational methods could revolutionize drug discovery.
on Tuesday, Ark Venture Partners And Foresight LabsAn affiliate of Foresight Capital announced that they have incubated Zyra Therapeutics and provided $1 billion in funding to AI biotech. Other investors in the new company, which has been operating in stealth mode for about six months, include F-Prime, NEA, Sequoia Capital, Lux Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures and SV Angel.
Zyra CEO Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a former Stanford president and Genentech’s chief scientific officer, says the company is poised to develop medicines that would have been impossible to make without recent breakthroughs in AI. “We have raised this much capital because we believe the technology is at an inflection point where it can have a transformative impact on the sector,” he said.
Advances in fundamental models come from the University of Washington’s Institute of Protein Design, run by David Baker, one of Zyra’s co-founders. These models are similar to the diffusion models that power image generators like OpenAI’s DALL-E and MidJourney. But rather than creating art, the goal of Baker’s model is to design molecular structures that can be created in the three-dimensional, physical world.
While Zyra’s investors are confident that the company can revolutionize data design, they stressed that generative AI applications in biology are still in their early stages.
Vic Bajaj, CEO of Foresight Labs and managing director of Foresight Capital, said that unlike technology, where the data that trains AI models is created by consumers, biology and medicine are “data poor”. You have to create datasets that drive model development.”
Other biotech companies using generic AI to design drugs include reversionwhich went public in 2021, and Genesis Therapeutics, a startup that raised a $200 million Series B last year co-led by Andreessen Horowitz.
The company declined to say when it expected its first drug to be available for human testing. However, Bob Nelson, managing director of ARCH Venture Partners, underlined that Zyra and its investors are prepared to play the long game.
“You need billions of dollars to be a real pharmaceutical company and think about AI. Both of those are expensive topics,” he said.
Zaira wants to establish itself as a powerhouse of AI drug discovery. However, some consider bringing in Tessier-Lavigne as CEO an unexpected move. Tessier-Lavigne resigned as Stanford president last year amid explosive reports Stanford Daily – That his laboratory at Genentech, where he previously served as chief scientific officer, had manipulated research data.
Tessier-Lavigne was not accused of manipulating any data herself and denied knowing that falsified research was being published from laboratories she visited.
Meanwhile, investors are confident that he is the right person for the position.
“I have known Mark for many years and know that he is a man of integrity and scientific vision who will be an exceptional CEO,” Nelson said in an email. “Stanford exonerated him of any wrongdoing or scientific misconduct.”
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