Alzheimer disease vaccine(Elan Pharmaceuticals, LLC)

A small Boston biotech has raised a $41.5 million Series A round to turn miniproteins into drugs, it exclusively told Endpoints News . AI Proteins, a 35-employee startup founded in 2021, has yet to enter the clinic, but is planning to use a hub-and-spoke model to keep investing in its platform while advancing its pipeline. Its newest raise was led by Mission BioCapital and Santé Ventures. CEO Chris Bahl co-founded AI Proteins in 2021, a few years after starting his own protein design laboratory affiliated with Harvard Medical School and Tim Springer’s Institute for Protein Innovation. While many AI-focused biotech startups are focused on making antibodies, Bahl’s startup stands relatively alone in seeing miniproteins not as a stepping stone to making larger protein-based drugs, but as a final product. “I don’t think the world needs another antibody company,” Bahl said in an interview. “There’s plenty of those.” The miniprotein focus came from “a desire to do something meaningful and different.” He’s worked on designing miniproteins for over a decade, including at David Baker’s Institute for Protein Design . Miniproteins are tiny compared with other protein-based drugs — roughly 95% smaller than a full-sized antibody and about half the size of a nanobody. The small size means they could potentially hit more targets in the body than full-sized antibodies. Today, Bahl said his startup has made strides in designing miniproteins with the durability, selectivity, binding affinity, and other drug-like properties that are needed for promising drug candidates. “We really have all of those problems solved beyond people’s wildest dreams for the miniprotein modality,” Bahl said. The company has not published these recent results, Bahl said, but did present some of its findings at a scientific conference earlier this year . On the business side, Bahl acknowledged it has “not been an easy road” to closing its A round. The startup raised an $18 million seed round nearly three years ago and signed a research deal with Bristol Myers Squibb last year. The company will use a hub-and-spoke business model, spinning out assets into standalone LLCs, so it can maintain its investment in its platform. “It’s not very capital-efficient if you throw the platform in the trash every few years,” Bahl said. “Biotech has perhaps struggled with its capital efficiency.” While the hub-and-spoke idea was always in the back of the mind, Bahl highlighted the role of its board chair, Steve Tregay, the managing general partner of Mission BioCapital who previously ran Forma Therapeutics with a similar structure. AI Proteins has already formed its first “spoke” with a placeholder name of AIP-001, Bahl said. Bahl declined to provide an expected timeline on first entering the clinic, but said a TNFR1-targeting minibinder is nearing selection of a development candidate. TNF-alpha is the target of one of the industry’s best-selling drugs, Humira. Bahl said they hope to differentiate its minibinder by specifically targeting just one of the hormone’s two receptors. “Lots of big pharma companies have tried unsuccessfully to do this in the past,” Bahl said. “We think we’ve cracked that nut.”