Pathos AI Secures $62M in Series C Funding to Boost Drug Development Platform

In a significant development, Pathos AI, a clinical-stage biotechnology company, announced the successful closing of an oversubscribed $62 million Series C funding round. The round was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with contributions from Revolution Growth and other existing investors. This new influx of capital will be directed towards expanding Pathos' team of scientists and engineers, speeding up the development of their AI-driven drug development platform, and advancing their clinical-stage pipeline of precision oncology therapeutics. With this latest round of funding, Pathos' total funding now stands at $102 million, and the company is valued at $600 million.

Pathos has recently acquired two clinical-stage precision oncology assets and plans to initiate the next clinical trials in 2025. The PATHOSTM platform, which integrates AI technology, is instrumental in their patient selection strategy and clinical trial design. The platform has enabled Pathos to prioritize certain biological mechanisms relevant to their drug P-500, a brain-penetrant PRMT5 inhibitor ready for phase II trials. These mechanisms have shown different patient outcomes in a subgroup of real-world IDH+ high-grade glioma patients. This insight can help identify patients who are likely to benefit from P-500, explaining why certain patients responded positively in the Phase I clinical trial while others did not. Pathos intends to use this insight to refine their patient selection strategy and launch an improved clinical trial to demonstrate enhanced efficacy.

Ryan Fukushima, Interim CEO of Pathos, highlighted the potential of AI in drug development. He noted that many investigational drugs with phase I results showing acceptable safety profiles and modest efficacy often fail in subsequent clinical trials. By leveraging AI to understand patient responses, Pathos aims to significantly increase the probability of successful trials, expedite clinical development, and revive failed or shelved compounds for the intended patients. Fukushima expressed excitement about collaborating with investors who share their vision of revolutionizing drug development, stating that the new funding will enable them to scale operations and improve patient outcomes more quickly.

Mohamad Makhzoumi, Co-CEO of NEA, expressed enthusiasm about leading Pathos' Series C financing. He emphasized the alignment between Pathos’ mission and NEA's history of investing at the intersection of technology and life sciences. Makhzoumi praised Pathos' innovative approach to drug discovery and development, combining AI capabilities with extensive libraries of clinical patient data, and looked forward to contributing to this strategic partnership.

Pathos is initially focusing on phase II oncology clinical trials, utilizing their AI platform to identify additional clinical stage opportunities with phase I results that demonstrate safe and tolerable profiles. The company systematically identifies causal links of critical biological mechanisms driving certain cancers and leading to adverse patient outcomes. With this information, Pathos prioritizes essential biological mechanisms and acquires drugs with relevant mechanisms of action to combat cancers in specific patient sub-populations. By aligning the right patient selection strategies with effective oncology therapeutics, Pathos aims to partner with biopharma companies to usher in a new era of precision medicine and improve success rates in clinical trials.

PathOS™ Platform, developed by Pathos, is a proprietary platform that provides critical insights and enables large-scale action. The platform employs a causal AI framework that analyzes changes in gene expression levels associated with overall survival and regulated by a given drug's mechanism. Pathos' AI models are powered by one of the largest multimodal real-world datasets, including patient outcomes, DNA sequencing, and RNA sequencing data. By combining in silico insights with ex-vivo drug screening approaches, Pathos verifies whether their patient selection strategies are predictive of future patient benefit before designing phase II clinical trials.

Pathos is dedicated to re-engineering drug development through AI, aiming to bring precision medicine to patients in collaboration with pharmaceutical companies. The company has raised over $100 million to accelerate the development of precision medicines and expand its platform, integrating computational approaches with multimodal real-world data and patient-derived biological models.