Monthly Vibe Bio Newsletter - July 2023
Every Cure for Every Community - AI Transforming Biotech
Welcome to ’s Monthly Newsletter! Stay up-to-date with our latest company updates and insights into the ever-evolving biotech funding landscape.
As we navigate through 2023, the worlds of artificial intelligence (AI) and biotechnology are converging more rapidly than ever, sparking a transformation that is revolutionizing the industry and attracting unprecedented funding.
From drug discovery to clinical trial matching, AI is helping the biotech industry quickly unlock tremendous efficiencies, enabling people to develop life-saving treatments sooner than ever before.
AI: A Catalyst for Biotech Innovation
Artificial Intelligence, the driving force behind various sectors, is now making an indelible mark on biotech. Its capabilities in deciphering massive datasets, predicting patterns, and accelerating decision-making processes are proving to be a game-changer in diagnostics, drug discovery, genomics, and much more.
Here are just a few articles discussing the impact of AI on biotech:
New Technology - AI for life: Trends in artificial intelligence for biotechnology
Current Opinion in Biotechnology - The future of Artificial Intelligence for the BioTech Big Data landscape
Drug Discovery Today - Pharma’s Bio-AI revolution
Cell Press - AI in drug discovery and its clinical relevance
Venture capitalists and institutional investors are acknowledging this trend, leading to substantial funding rounds for AI-based biotech startups. This surge in capital has resulted in significant advancements and the development of solutions that are more efficient, accurate, and personalized.
AI-Driven Drug Discovery: The New Frontier
A key area where AI is making waves is drug discovery. Traditionally, this process has been notoriously costly, time-consuming, and fraught with a high rate of failure. But AI, with its data-crunching abilities, is turning the tide.
AI startups are attracting significant funding for their work in this space. Leveraging machine learning and predictive algorithms, they're shortening drug discovery timelines, enhancing the understanding of disease mechanisms, and reducing the overall cost of bringing new therapeutics to market.
Disease Diagnosis
AI is helping clinicians diagnose diseases more accurately. By analyzing medical images or genetic data, AI can identify patterns that may be missed by the human eye. In many rare disease patients, it can take months or even years to come up with a true diagnosis. Applying AI to high quality data, researchers are able to cut that timeframe significantly.
Protein Folding
AI has made significant strides in predicting protein folding, a complex problem that is fundamental to understanding disease mechanisms and drug design. The success of DeepMind's AlphaFold is a testament to this.
Synthetic Biology
AI is boosting the field of synthetic biology by designing and optimizing synthetic organisms. SynBio can help develop new drugs and improve manufacturing processes. For example, it can engineer novel bacteria, yeast, or algae to produce pharmaceutical compounds, making production more efficient, sustainable, and cost-effective.
Challenges and Opportunities Ahead
Despite the exciting progress, AI in biotech also presents new challenges, including ethical considerations, data security, and algorithmic bias. As investment continues to flow into this sector, stakeholders must work together to ensure these technologies are developed and used responsibly.
Beware of the Hype
While it’s exciting to talk about the great potential of AI, biotech executives are wary of the overhyped chatter in the industry. In a recent EndPoints article, Geoffrey Porges (CFO of the $3.5B biotech company Schrödinger) effectively warned stakeholders about AI, 'The more overhype, the harder you fall'.
As investors and biotech executives contemplate the profound technological and societal implications of AI, it is crucial for them to acknowledge the necessary timeframe for the industry to establish robust regulations and ensure the responsible and proficient utilization of this transformative technology.
Looking Forward
We are witnessing a paradigm shift in biotechnology, powered by AI. With continued support from investors, the scope for breakthroughs in this space is enormous. As always, we'll keep you updated on the latest trends, breakthroughs, and investment opportunities in this exciting intersection of technology and biology.
We want to hear from you!
Which AI biotech companies should we be following? Are you a biotech founder leveraging AI to streamline and optimize your work? We would love to support you.
Learn about Inflection Point Financing (IPF)
Vibe Bio’s strategy supports biotechs through Inflection Point Financing (IPF).
Utilizing our extensive network of industry experts, Vibe Bio expeditiously assesses high-potential drug programs, unlocking capital through a deferred payment arrangement.
IPF:
✅ is a commitment between a biotech company and Vibe Bio
✅ can cover external expenses (i.e. CRO, equipment, etc.)
✅ has an extended repayment period
✅ offers a deferred repayment (Buy now, Pay later) until your company’s next influx of capital
✅ offers additional support beyond financing - pitch deck development, experiment design, CRO contracting support, warm introductions to Vibe Bio’s VC network.
✅ is non-dilutive (avoids direct equity in your company)
❌ is not a loan or venture debt
❌ has no covenants
IPF enables biotech companies to dedicate more time on science and less time fundraising, marking a shift in the biotech fundraising paradigm and prevents potentially groundbreaking research from being abandoned.
💰 If you are seeking novel and rapid financing strategies to drive you towards your next inflection point, Vibe Bio would like to speak with you. Let’s explore opportunities together.
VibeCast Updates 🎙️
On VibeCast, our Industry Engagement Manager and show host Ray Dogum, interviews Vibe Bio community experts who come from diverse backgrounds and career paths. However, one commonality that all VibeCast guests have is a passion to improve society by encouraging research and educating others by sharing their own experiences.
Collectively we have the skills. We have the technology. We have the passion. We now need the community catalyst to bring it all together. That’s Vibe.
In addition to our YouTube channel, you can listen to episodes on:
We are always looking for interesting and knowledgeable people to interview on our show. If you know of a community member who would be a great guest, please let us know. You can suggest a guest by sending us an email, leaving a Substack comment below, or reaching out via social media.
Check out the latest episodes 16-19 below.
Cancer’s Achilles’ Heel? Onchilles Advancing Novel Immunotherapy to Clinical Trials | VibeCast Ep 16
Mr. Court Turner is cofounder and Executive Chair of Onchilles and a partner of LYZZ Capital. Mr. Turner has more than 20 years of experience in founding, operating, fundraising for, and exiting life science companies. Before joining Onchilles, Mr. Turner was a venture partner at Avalon Ventures. During his time at Avalon, he served as the founding CEO and director of both Synthorx, Inc. (acquired by Sanofi) and Cellular Approaches, Inc. Prior to those roles, Mr. Turner was the founding chairman and CEO of RQx Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Genentech). Before RQx Pharmaceuticals, he served as a member of the executive management teams at both Kalypsys, Inc. and Aurora Biosciences (acquired by Vertex Pharmaceuticals). Mr. Turner received his J.D. from the University of San Diego School of Law and a B.S. in psychology from San Diego State University.
Dr. Lev Becker is cofounder and serves as a member of the board at Onchilles. He is also an Associate Professor at the University of Chicago in the Ben May Department for Cancer Research. Dr. Becker’s lab combines proteomic, bioinformatic, immunologic, and functional approaches to study innate immune cells in an unbiased manner across a spectrum of diseases and develops therapeutics to target them. His work has been published in prestigious scientific journals including Cell and Nature. Dr. Becker has received several awards for his research, including: the Duckworth Fund Commercial Promise, J Clifford Moos, and Janet Rowley Discovery Fund awards from the University of Chicago, and the Young Investigator and Fletcher Scholar awards from the Cancer Research Foundation. His lab is currently funded by the National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive Kidney Diseases, and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. He earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Queens University and completed his postdoctoral studies in proteomics and macrophages at the University of Washington.
The Cell Therapy Crisis? Mark Kotter, PhD on the state of Cell Therapy | VibeCast Episode 17
Mark Kotter, MD, PhD, is a stem cell biologist and neurosurgeon at the University of Cambridge. Aged nineteen, he decided to pursue a career in medicine to serve others and to make a difference in people’s lives. His curiosity led him down a path of clinical service and laboratory discovery. He became fascinated by synthetic biology, as he saw it as the key to a new generation of medicines. He is the founder of bit.bio and co-founder of the cultured meat start-up Meatable.
Are Biomarkers the Future? Mo Jain, MD, PhD on Small Molecule Biomarkers | VibeCast Ep 18
Dr. Jain is a physician-scientist with more than 20 years of expertise in physiology, biomedicine, engineering, computational biology, and mass spectrometry-based metabolomics. Prior to founding Sapient, he formed and was director of Jain Laboratory at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). There he led a multi-disciplinary research team to develop next-generation rapid liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (rLC-MS) systems to probe the non-genetic landscape of disease across population-scale human studies, supported by over $30M in federal, foundation, and industry funding. Dr. Jain founded Sapient in 2021 as a spinout of Jain Laboratory to expand upon the mission of accelerating human discovery and drug development through the nexus of high throughput analytical mass spectrometry, computational biology, and population-level biomarker profiling. Dr. Jain has held faculty positions at UCSD since 2013, most recently as a Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology. He obtained his MD and PhD from Boston University School of Medicine, and performed clinical residency and fellowship training in Internal Medicine, Cardiology, and Preventative Cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School.
Community Feedback
We encourage you to explore our Discord server and learn more about our mission to accelerate the development of new treatments and cures through inflection point financing. You can also follow us on social media to stay up-to-date with the latest news and updates from our community.
Tell us what else you’d like to see in future editions of the newsletter. We’d love to hear from you!
Sincerely,
The Vibe Bio Community Team
#EveryCureforEveryCommunity