LabGenius raises £35m to expand its antibody discovery platform

The investment brings LabGenius’ total funding to £58m. The new round was led by new investor M Ventures (Merck’s venture capital). New investors Octopus Ventures and LG Corp, together with existing investors including Atomico, Kindred Capital, Lux Capital and Obvious Ventures joined the Series B round.

LabGenius will use proceeds to expand the scope of its ML-driven discovery platform and progress a wholly-owned pipeline of multispecific antibodies towards the clinic. Building on the success of a research collaboration with Sanofi, the extended platform capability can facilitate broader strategic partnerships across multiple therapeutic modalities.

LabGenius relies on EVA™: an  automated closed-loop self-learning discovery engine to rapidly identify antibodies with non-intuitive designs. LabGenius uses EVA for creation of a proprietary cancer antibody pipeline and to partner with major pharmaceutical companies. The identified antibodies selectively target surface markers that are present at higher-than-normal levels.

LabGenius’ technology platform thereby uses an active learning method called Multi-Objective Bayesian Optimisation (MOBO) to enable the efficient co-optimisation of antibodies across multiple important properties.