Cambridge, UK: o2h Ventures’ portfolio companies. Turbine, which is building a platform for simulating cell behaviour to understand cancer biology, concluded its Series A investment round after raising €20 million. It was led by Mercia and MSD Global Health Innovation fund with other investors including Day One Capital j. Pre-existing investors o2h Ventures, Accel, Delin Ventures, and XTX Ventures also participated or plan to participate in the round.
Turbine is developing its Simulated Cell platform to enhance the drug discovery and development process, resulting in a higher chance of success at all stages. The company was bootstrapped by the founders before its current focus on a proprietary pipeline and partnerships, who firmly believed in simulation-guided drug development. With their computational method, the technology is making it simpler to find clinically proven targets.
Szabolcs Nagy, CEO of Turbine, said: “We’ve come a long way since 2016, when a handful of biologists and data scientists bootstrapped a technology to predict experiments better reflecting patients and more likely to translate in the clinic. With over 60 experts across the globe and the support of investors like MSD Global Health Innovation Fund and Mercia Asset Management, we’re poised to demonstrate that simulations not only reveal new ways of treating cancer but increase the likelihood of success at every single step of the drug development process. We are thankful for o2h Ventures for helping us format the overall strategy and connecting us to the Cambridge & wider UK biotech and investor ecosystem!”
Sunil Shah, CEO of o2h Ventures, said: “Szabi, Kristof and Daniel have been a force of nature developing and driving the platform, the programs, and building a highly credible, experienced, scientific pharmaceutical team alongside Turbine’s technology developers.” The close of Series A is a demonstration of the confidence and brilliant execution that the team and board has delivered. We are thrilled to have backed Turbine and pleased to see more strategic investors joining the team and supporting the start-up. Looking forward to further similar advancements.”
About Turbine
Based in London, UK, with offices in Budapest, Hungary and Cambridge, UK, Turbine was founded in 2016 by Kristof Szalay, Ph.D., Daniel Veres, M.D., Ph.D., and Szabolcs Nagy to overcome the limitations of existing methods in identifying oncology treatments that truly benefit the patients who receive them by combining molecular biology and artificial intelligence (AI). Since its founding, Turbine has developed and validated the Simulated Cell, a proprietary and cutting-edge platform that runs billions of simulations prior to ever initiating preclinical development guiding real-life experiments with invaluable biological insights. This improves the likelihood of success for truly novel therapies and allows existing assets to be optimally targeted to patients most likely to benefit from them. Turbine’s technology leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to build a constantly evolving, predictive simulation of cellular signaling. These virtual cells are used for in silico experiments having never been run in the lab, capturing patient biology better than available experimental models and testing more drug-like effects than current high throughput screening approaches. Validating the uncovered mechanisms and using the resulting data as feedback further improves the model’s capabilities to reveal novel biological mechanisms. Simulations have already been validated from target discovery to patient stratification and life cycle management in collaborations with multiple big pharma companies. Turbine is now leveraging the Simulated Cell platform to develop its own stream of programs; expanding from an early focus on overcoming resistance to DNA Damage Response (DDR) inhibitors, the company is pursuing multiple high unmet oncology needs. Turbine is also working with partners to extend its pipeline to various modalities and cancer mechanisms.
For more information, please visit: https://turbine.ai/
About o2h Ventures
The o2h Ventures ‘Human Health’ SEIS and Knowledge Intensive (KI) funds make tax-efficient investments in Pre-Seed and Seed stage companies that address human disease. The main focus of the investments is on the development of novel therapeutic treatments with a clear path to the clinic.
The o2h team are leaders in the biotech community and have been actively involved as investors, holding various board/industry positions as well as being engaged in grassroots scientific activity for over 20 years. o2h Ventures operates from their proprietary 2.7 acre Mill SciTech Park where they are developing a unique model for incubating small life science companies.
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