AI platform to unlock new classes of anti-sense oligonucleotide therapies.
TORONTO, Ontario, Canada, September 25, 2017 - Deep Genomics, the leading AI therapeutics company, received a USD $13 million equity investment led by Khosla Ventures, one of the top venture capital firms. They are accompanied by early stage investment firm True Ventures.
Deep Genomics joins Khosla Ventures’ portfolio, which includes Climate Corporation, Editas Medicine, Guardant Health and Square. “Khosla Ventures is well aligned with our mission to build a new kind of world-class genetic medicine company,” said Brendan Frey, CEO and scientific founder of Deep Genomics. “A company whose founding principle is that the future of medicine will rely on artificial intelligence, because biology is too complex for humans to understand.”
In the next three years, Deep Genomics will use its platform to unlock new classes of anti-sense oligonucleotide therapies that were previously inaccessible, and advance them for clinical evaluation. “We believe that the technology developed at Deep Genomics puts them in a unique position to identify new therapies,” said Founding Partner Vinod Khosla. “Because of the quality of their science and engineering team and the deep integration of their AI technology into their preclinical drug development pipeline, we are confident that a very large potential exists here.”
Deep Genomics is building a biologically accurate data- and AI-driven platform that supports geneticists, molecular biologists and chemists in the development of therapies. In project Saturn, named after the god of plenty and renewal, the platform will be used to search across a vast space of over 69 billion molecules and to generate a library of 1000 compounds that can be used to precisely manipulate cell biology. This technology will enable Deep Genomics to identify preclinical candidates and to advance them for clinical evaluation in collaboration with stakeholders.
About Deep Genomics – Founded in 2015, Deep Genomics has over twenty team members with advanced degrees, including from Cambridge, MIT, Stanford, Toronto, UCSD, Washington and Waterloo. It is located in the heart of Toronto, the fastest growing tech hub in North America and one of the most livable cities in the world. Its facility includes laboratory and office space next door to two universities, four research hospitals, three medical research institutes, and the AI research labs of Google, Uber and Vector. Deep Genomics will be expanding its experimental laboratory in JLABS.
About Khosla Ventures – Khosla Ventures is a VC firm that provides equity funding and strategic advice to entrepreneurs working on breakthrough technologies. The firm was founded in 2004 by Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, and focuses on transformative technology in health, consumer, enterprise, education, financial services, big data, agriculture/food, sustainable energy and robotics. They have invested in AI for radiology, cardiology, ultrasound, mental health, drug discovery and diagnostics. Khosla Ventures is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.
Deep Genomics’ laboratory is located at Johnson & Johnson Innovation, JLABS, in Toronto (JLABS @ Toronto), a 40,000 square-foot life science innovation center located in the MaRS Discovery District. The labs provide a flexible environment for start-up companies pursuing new technologies and research platforms to advance medical care.
Press contact: Megan Murphy, megan@deepgenomics.com