Charm Therapeutics Ltd.

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C., Dec. 17, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Incyclix Bio, LLC, a next-generation cell cycle control company developing INX-315, a novel, potent and selective CDK2 inhibitor for the treatment of advanced and resistant cancer, today announced the appointment of Kimberly Blackwell, MD, to its Board of Directors as an independent board member. Dr. Blackwell is a leading oncology innovator and breast cancer researcher who brings over 20 years in drug development experience to Incyclix. “Dr. Blackwell is a distinguished leader in breast cancer research with a breadth of experience advancing multiple oncology programs through the clinic,” said Patrick Roberts, Pharm.D., Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Incyclix Bio. “We’re thrilled to welcome Dr. Blackwell as we continue our momentum evaluating our CDK2 inhibitor for the treatment of advanced and metastatic cancers, including breast cancer.” Dr. Blackwell is Chief Development Officer at Nucleus RadioPharm, an advanced radiopharmaceutical manufacturing and research and development company partnered with the Mayo Clinic. With over 20 years in drug development, she founded Key Oncology Consulting and has guided multiple early-stage biotech companies in precision oncology. Her past leadership roles include CEO and Board Member of Zentalis Pharmaceuticals, Chief Medical Officer at Tempus AI, and senior positions at Eli Lilly, where she was recognized by Endpoints as one of the “Twenty Extraordinary Women in Biopharma R&D.” In 2013, she was recognized as TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People for pioneering targeted therapies including lapatinib and T-DM1 for HER2-positive disease. A former Duke University Cancer Institute faculty member, Dr. Blackwell has led more than 50 clinical trials, co-founded radiotherapeutics company Cereius, and serves on the Boards of Century Therapeutics, Monte Rosa Therapeutics, Charm Therapeutics and Fore Therapeutics. “Incyclix’s pioneering work exploring CDK2 inhibition has exciting potential to improve outcomes for patients with treatment resistant and advanced cancer,” said Dr. Blackwell. “I look forward to supporting Incyclix’s team as they advance INX-315 through the clinic and toward patients with unmet need.” About Incyclix Bio Incyclix Bio is a next-generation cell cycle control company advancing precision treatments that target the aberrant proliferation driving many cancers. The company’s lead compound, INX-315, is a potent and selective cyclin-dependent kinase 2 (CDK2) inhibitor in clinical development. Incyclix Bio is a scientific leader in understanding cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs) and their role in the cell cycle as attractive therapeutic targets across many tumor types, including ovarian, breast and lung cancers. Headquartered in Research Triangle Park, NC, Incyclix Bio is founded by pioneers in CDK inhibitor discovery, research and development. For more information, visit incyclixbio.com. Media ContactTony Plohoros908-591-2839tplohoros@6degreespr.com

Chris Bahl saw the writing on the wall for his new AI startup in the final weeks of 2022: Molecules would matter more than models. A pair of preprints had just come out, both showing diffusion models that could generate not just images, but proteins. Bahl, then the chief scientist of his startup AI Proteins, realized that the still-young AI bio sector was about to change. He concluded that the race to build leading AI protein models was too commoditized, especially as these cutting-edge models called RFdiffusion and Chroma became freely available as open-source technology. Bahl stopped his team’s efforts on building general-purpose protein models, shifting focus to narrower AI applications for other drug development tasks. “I saw no path to ROI for generating a proprietary model,” Bahl, now the CEO of AI Proteins, said in an interview. Today, much of the AI bio field has come around to Bahl’s position, turning its focus to the drug industry’s bread and butter of creating and developing new molecules. New, advanced AI models for biology are still being developed and used in that process. But there’s less interest in startups advancing cutting-edge AI tech with a hunch that a viable business will follow. These startups need to show that the latest AI technologies can produce not just preprints, but actual drug programs. This next generation of companies, like Bahl’s, is sprinting to the clinic, with 2026 shaping up to be a reality check on whether generative AI can finally move the needle on R&D productivity. To analyze what 2026 holds for AI in biotech, Endpoints News reviewed the pipelines of 11 leading AI drug startups, mostly founded between 2018 and 2021. Many are finally moving into human testing, where the sector’s big promises will be tested: Out of the 11 companies, there are currently eight programs in human testing. By the end of next year, that number is expected to nearly triple to 21 programs in the clinic. “There’s a perennial swing between assets and platforms,” said Elliot Hershberg, a biotech investor at Menlo Park-based Amplify Partners, which raised its first dedicated biotech fund this year. “That has clearly dialed more towards assets in this recent market,” he said in an interview. There are many examples. This year, San Diego-based Iambic raised $100 million after its first clinical readout, and plans to use the cash to bring two more drugs into human testing in 2026. Earlier this month, Generate:Biomedicines took its lead program into Phase 3 — a milestone that the first wave of AI-focused biotechs like Recursion, Insilico Medicine, and Absci have yet to reach. The Flagship-founded company expects to soon file two more new drug applications with regulators, for cancer programs. And while the field’s richest startups, including Isomorphic Labs and Xaira Therapeutics, have remained tight-lipped on lead programs and clinical timelines, both have said they’re also largely focused on building pipelines. Isomorphic, for example, used a chunk of the $600 million it raised this year to establish a Boston area office and hire up a clinical development team led by ex-Relay Therapeutics’ Ben Wolf as chief medical officer. Others, however, seem stuck in what Hershberg calls a “weird danger zone,” between building a pipeline and selling tools or services. That includes cautionary tales like EvolutionaryScale, which raised a $142 million seed round in 2024 with plans to build massive AI models in biology. This year, with little to show for progress since its debut, it was folded into Mark Zuckerberg’s nonprofit science project , under undisclosed deal terms. The sector’s evolving focus has sometimes led to major changes at the companies. After five years of  “AlphaFold-for-X” startups inspired by DeepMind’s 2020 protein structure-predicting model, many of the companies are pivoting to pipelines. London-based CHARM Therapeutics was founded in 2021 by Laksh Aithani, then a 23-year-old wunderkind who developed an AI model called DragonFold to predict protein-ligand structures. A first-time CEO, Aithani raised a $50 million Series A in 2022 from top-tier investors and dreamed of building the next AstraZeneca off AI’s potential. Instead, this spring, he left as CEO in a mutually agreed decision with the board. The company is now led by Gary Glick, its 64-year-old executive chair and a serial biotech entrepreneur, and the CEO slot is empty. Under Glick, CHARM raised an $80 million Series B , meant to get  its lead drug into the clinic in early 2026. While CHARM’s Series A was driven off the potential and excitement for DragonFold, the Series B was fueled by preclinical data packages and a plan of reaching clinical proof-of-concept. “You don’t get credit for academic papers,” said Carl Hansen, the CEO of AbCellera, a computational-focused biotech he co-founded in 2012. “You don’t get credit for things on the pipeline that are preclinical. You get credit for molecules.” Hansen pivoted AbCellera’s own business strategy in 2023 to focus on the pipeline. He expects a readout in mid-2026 for its lead candidate, an antibody targeting NK3R. “Our belief is: ‘Show me the money,’” Hansen said in an interview. “The money is drugs in the clinic that ultimately get good data and make a difference.” Not that getting to the clinic solves an AI startup’s challenges. It’s just the beginning of a grueling journey full of hard decisions on how to move forward. Many of the high-flying AI startups will ultimately be measured by how they do at the boring, old work of designing and running the right clinical studies, often in competitive crowded drug classes like TL1A or HER2. “Suddenly you’re competing not on discovery. You’re competing against your ability to do clinical development and have a low cost of capital,” Hansen said. “Before you know it, you’re $400 million into that and it no longer makes any sense to develop, to invest in, the platform capabilities.” AbCellera doesn’t publish or talk much about the intermediate steps behind its own antibody discovery process. With the market’s emphasizing assets, Hansen said the company wouldn’t — and shouldn’t — get credit for that type of work. “Everyone should be skeptical of everything everyone is saying, including me, until I show you the evidence,” Hansen said. “The evidence has to be smart choices on drugs that are highly differentiated that are at least in the clinic.”

Odyssey Therapeutics has pulled together a nine-figure private funding round after halting its public market ambitions earlier this year. The biotech raised $213 million from its existing investors and a batch of new backers, more than it had initially sought, CEO Gary Glick told Endpoints News ahead of the company’s announcement Wednesday. The Series D includes first-time Odyssey supporters Affinity Asset Advisors, Dimension Capital, Jeito Capital, Lightspeed Ventures, TPG Life Sciences Innovations and Wedbush Healthcare Partners. The Boston-based startup has now raised more than $700 million when factoring in partnerships with Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Terray Therapeutics. Earlier this year, Odyssey pulled back from IPO plans as the market soured, saying that it wasn’t in the “best interests” of the startup to move ahead. The industry has gone nearly seven months without a Nasdaq listing, though that could change in the coming days if schizophrenia drug developer LB Pharmaceuticals goes forward with its plans to raise $228 million in a new offering. Odyssey came on the scene in 2021. It had built out an oncology research site in San Diego, a biologics-focused team in Frankfurt, and a synthetic chemistry unit in Ann Arbor, MI. The startup consolidated into sites in Boston and Ann Arbor, and has approximately 100 employees today, Glick said in an interview. It’s now in Phase 2 with a RIPK2 small molecule called OD-07656 that’s being tested for inflammatory bowel disease. “Speed is incredibly important and Odyssey has gone from a standstill to Phase 2 in under four years,” Glick said. He said that all of Odyssey’s pipeline projects were discovered in-house. Glick declined to share details of Odyssey’s specific clinical development plans, but said the startup will have “multiple clinical entries” in 2026. The Series D will allow Odyssey to prove whether “multiple” of its experimental medicines can make a difference in various diseases, and will give the company financial runway to early or mid-2028, the CEO said. Odyssey is also developing small molecules going after IRAK4, NLRP1 and MDA5 for various conditions such as atopic dermatitis, osteoarthritis, systemic sclerosis and Sjögren’s syndrome, among other indications. It also has protein therapeutics in TSLP/IL-33 and TNFR2 for asthma, type 1 diabetes and vitiligo, among other conditions. Glick is also steering London startup Charm Therapeutics , a machine learning biotech where he serves as executive chair. Co-founded by David Baker, the biotech nabbed a key funding round this month as well, collecting $80 million in a Series B. He also co-founded Scorpion Therapeutics, which sold to Eli Lilly in January and then spun out most of its pipeline into Antares Therapeutics .