Latent Labs, a pioneering startup founded by a former DeepMind scientist, has unveiled its mission to “make biology programmable” with an impressive funding of $50 million. This breakthrough will empower researchers to create novel therapeutic molecules and optimize proteins through AI foundation models.
The significance of proteins in biology cannot be overstated. As building blocks of cells, they drive crucial processes, from enzyme production to antibody formation. Their unique 3D structures determine their functions. However, determining these structures has historically been a tedious and time-consuming process.
DeepMind’s groundbreaking AlphaFold revolutionized this process, predicting the structures of 200 million proteins using machine learning and biological data. Armed with this information, scientists can now delve deeper into disease understanding, drug design, and even create synthetic proteins for unprecedented applications.
Latent Labs steps into the arena with its ambition to computationally create therapeutic molecules from scratch. Co-founded by Simon Kohl, a former DeepMind researcher, the company aims to spearhead the advancement of protein design models.
Latent Labs’ team of experts, hailing from DeepMind, Microsoft, and the University of Cambridge, has established a collaborative network with two locations – London for cutting-edge model development and San Francisco for wet lab testing and computational protein design. This synergy allows for real-world validation of their models, accelerating progress.
While wet labs remain crucial for validating predictions, Latent Labs’ ultimate goal is to minimize their reliance. By bringing biology into the computational realm, the need for countless experiments and years of iteration will diminish.
Instead of developing its own therapeutic candidates, Latent Labs will focus on partnering with biopharma and biotech companies to expedite and de-risk early R&D stages.
Latent Labs’ $50 million funding, led by Radical Ventures and Sofinnova Partners, will fuel advancements in model scaling, team expansion, and partnership development. The company is committed to fostering innovation in the intersection of computation and biology, alongside other startups like Cradle and Bioptimus.
As the field of AI-powered biology continues to evolve, Latent Labs is poised to lead the charge in decoding and designing biological systems. With its impressive funding and expert team, the company aims to revolutionize drug discovery and pave the way for unprecedented scientific advancements.
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