London-based Basecamp Research, which sends scientists around the world to collect microbes and discover novel proteins to build a database of previously unexplored biology, has raised $60m in a Series B round led by VC firm Singular.
Other investors included S32, redalpine, vice-chairman of Roche André Hoffmann, chair of Royal Philips’s supervisory board Feike Sijbesma and Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever. Previous investors True Ventures and Hummingbird Ventures also backed the round.
A database of life
The startup is building a dataset of proteins found in nature, intending to enable new computational discoveries in fields like drugs and novel materials discovery.
“We’re looking for protein codes around the world so customers can look for very specific characteristics,” Marlon Clark, field research scientist at Basecamp, told Sifted last year.
Basecamp uses its proprietary AI to break down the properties of the proteins it discovers, then partners with companies that are looking for novel proteins to make new and improved products. For example, it works with biopharma companies and academic research institutions to design novel protein sequences that help further the research and development of new clinical treatments. It’s so far got 15 commercial bioscience partnerships across industries under its belt.
Alongside the Series B round, the company has also agreed to a multi-year collaboration with the laboratory of Dr. David R. Liu at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. This partnership will aim to develop novel fusion proteins and other large molecules to create new genetic medicines to treat a range of diseases.
This fits in with the company’s next big goal, says cofounder Oliver Vince. The company is aiming to create “a new class of foundational models for biology (the first to give AI a complete understanding of the true breadth and complexity of how biology works), using this to programmably design new classes of sophisticated biological solutions in biopharma,” which its partnership with Liu will be focused on.
Scaling the database
The fresh financing will be used to kick the pace and volume of Basecamp’s data collection up a notch — the company says that its foundational dataset already contains 100 times more advanced biological systems than the public databases that pharma researchers are currently using the most.
“[We’re planning a] massive increase in investment into data collection (at least 10x by year-end) and compute,” says Vince.
“We’re also working in a very focused way with our biodiversity partners (more than 100 around the world) offering them technology and training to scale up sample collection and we’re investing in forging new biodiversity partnerships around the world — we will be very active at the UN biodiversity talks at Cop 16 in Cali, Columbia later this month.”
And the expansion of the team at the top level is already underway: the company has appointed Anupama Hoey, former chief business officer at US-based Sensei Biotherapeutics which IPO’d in 2021, as its chief commercial officer.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/basecamp-research-60m-series-b/
