Lower than a 12 months after rising from stealth operations with $12.7 million and partnerships with pharmaceutical giants, Seattle-based biotech startup Accipiter Biosciences has added $10.5 million to its funding complete. The brand new money will let the corporate transfer quicker on promising drug candidates.
“We may have caught with the unique plan and been simply nice,” mentioned Matthew Bick, Accipiter Bio’s co-founder and CEO. “However we thought we’d relatively capitalize on the progress we’ve made now and diversify our scientific portfolio.”
The workforce has grown to 22 folks and contains researchers who labored on the College of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design below Nobel laureate David Baker.
The corporate makes use of synthetic intelligence instruments developed on the institute to engineer proteins with the weird capacity to bind a number of mobile targets directly, doubtlessly amplifying their capacity to combat sicknesses.
“We’re not simply making an attempt to duplicate what antibodies can do,” Bick mentioned. “We’re unlocking some actually attention-grabbing biology.”
Accipiter Bio has a collaboration and license settlement with Pfizer to analysis and engineer new molecules. The deal gives an upfront fee and the potential to earn greater than $330 million by means of milestones and royalties. The startup has a equally structured settlement with oncology drug firm Kite Pharma, owned by Gilead Sciences, to design proteins to be used in cell therapies.
The startup additionally runs its personal in-house drug-development packages. It initially deliberate to advance one or two into the clinic, however the further money will enable it to carry three or 4 packages ahead into scientific trials. Bick mentioned the corporate is now primarily targeted on immunology-related situations, alongside its lead oncology program.
The corporate launched in March 2023, rising from stealth in November 2025. The brand new funding is an addition to Accipiter Bio’s seed spherical and contains solely current buyers. Flying Fish Companions and Takeda co-led the seed spherical, which included Columbus Enterprise Companions, Cercano Capital, Washington Analysis Basis, Alexandria Investments, Pack Ventures and Argonautic Ventures.
The brand new funding will assist develop the workforce, bringing in further scientists and reaching a headcount of about 30 folks over the following six months to a 12 months.
Curiosity continues to develop in AI’s potential to hurry up the creation of latest medication. However Bick cautions that the method isn’t so simple as some would possibly counsel, notably for extra advanced therapeutics.
He is aware of this firsthand: he and two of his co-founders labored at Neoleukin, a biotech firm co-founded by Baker that spun out of the UW in 2019. The startup’s lead drug candidate, an engineered protein utilized in most cancers remedy, underperformed in a Section 1 trial. Neoleukin laid off a lot of its staff earlier than merging with one other firm.
“There’s an impression with AI strategies which you can simply hit a button and also you get your molecule out, but it surely’s not that straightforward — and definitely whenever you’re pushing the strategies to their limits, it’s actually not that straightforward,” Bick mentioned.
The method nonetheless requires asking the fitting therapeutic questions, guide engineering and a deep understanding of the molecules, he mentioned. “There’s nonetheless protein instinct that comes into it.”
