Enveda Raises $311M Series E to Push Nature-Derived AI Drugs Through Clinical Trials
核心洞察
Enveda Biosciences (搜索) has raised $311 million in a Series E financing led by Catalio Capital Management (搜索), with participation from Iconiq, Surveyor Capital, T. Rowe Price, Lux Capital and a sovereign wealth fund.
The Colorado-based company uses artificial intelligence to identify molecules in plants and microbes, predict their structure and function, and rank them by drug potential for chemists to develop.
Three Enveda candidates are in human testing: ENV-294 for atopic dermatitis (搜索) and asthma (搜索), ENV-308 (搜索) for weight maintenance after GLP-1 (搜索) discontinuation, and ENV-6949 (搜索) targeting the TL1A (搜索) pathway in inflammatory bowel disease (搜索).
Enveda Biosciences (搜索) has raised $311 million in a Series E financing to advance its pipeline of AI-discovered, nature-derived drugs through clinical development. The Colorado-based company announced the round on Wednesday, saying the proceeds will support continued clinical testing of its candidates, three of which are already in human trials.
The round was led by Catalio Capital Management (搜索) and includes 16 other backers, among them Iconiq, Surveyor Capital, T. Rowe Price, Lux Capital and a sovereign wealth fund. The financing rivals totals secured in some of the biotechnology sector's larger initial public offerings this year.
A Discovery Platform Built on Plants and Microbes
Enveda's premise is that powerful medicines can be harnessed from plants and microbes rather than synthesized from scratch in a lab. The company uses artificial intelligence to identify molecules in living organisms, predict their structure and function, and rank them by drug potential. Enveda's chemists then turn the most promising molecules into drug prospects.
Founder and CEO Viswa Colluru, an early employee of Recursion Pharmaceuticals, started the company in 2019 to speed up that discovery process. In June, Colluru told BioPharma Dive that Enveda is already evaluating 17 programs to emerge from the research.
"As much as the industry has gotten comfortable with the more iterative approaches, the thing that moves the needle for patients and seeds power law returns for companies is first-in-class mechanisms that shift the paradigm," Colluru said at the time.
Three Programs in the Clinic
Earlier this year, Enveda disclosed Phase 1 data from a pair of AI-designed programs for atopic dermatitis (搜索) and obesity (搜索).
ENV-294 is a "molecular glue" that showed the potential to reduce eczema symptoms in a small, early clinical trial. Colluru said the drug, a pill, could help people who do not respond to approved atopic dermatitis (搜索) treatments such as Dupixent. Phase 2 trials are underway in eczema and asthma (搜索).
ENV-308 (搜索) is described by Enveda as a "pill designed from the chemistry of exercise." The experimental therapy mimics a hormone called Lac-Phe (搜索) that the body releases after exercise or meals, and it displayed an encouraging safety profile in early-stage testing. Enveda plans to test ENV-308's ability to help people maintain weight loss after stopping GLP-1 (搜索) use.
A third drug, ENV-6949 (搜索), targets the TL1A (搜索) pathway, an emerging approach to treating inflammatory bowel disease (搜索).
Partnering Strategy
Colluru has outlined a strategy of advancing multiple drugs into the clinic and partnering each at the point where the value inflection is right, so that validation and capital from one asset can support others.
"The way we think about it is, put multiple drugs into the clinic [and] strategically partner each of these at the time when the value inflection is right, such that we get both the validation and capital to move other chess pieces further along," he said in June.
Enveda is among a wave of companies advancing AI-discovered candidates into human clinical trials, a field that has not yet produced an FDA-approved drug.