Protein design startup Outpace lands $144M to test treatments that target solid tumors

Outpace Bio, a Seattle startup utilizing synthetic intelligence to design proteins which can be integrated into most cancers therapies focusing on stable tumors, has raised $144 million in new money from buyers.

The contemporary funding will enable Outpace researchers to check its remedy in a scientific setting. The aim is to learn sufferers and validate the corporate’s strategy to battling most cancers.

A rising variety of most cancers remedies harness a sort of immune system cell referred to as a T cell to focus on and destroy cancerous cells. The technique has been profitable for blood cancers, however the stable tumors are higher at deflecting the therapies, stated Outpace co-founder and CEO Marc Lajoie.

So Outpace is modifying the T cells in a number of methods to enhance their efficiency whereas limiting dangerous negative effects for sufferers.

“In case you consider most cancers as a sport of Whack-a-Mole, you’ll be able to’t simply whack the primary mole and win the sport,” Lajoie advised GeekWire. “You want to have the ability to whack every of the moles that comes up. And so that you want a number of applied sciences in place to be resilient to all of these completely different mechanisms that the most cancers can throw at you to show off the exercise of the drug.”

Outpace co-founders Lajoie and Scott Boyken, who serves because the startup’s chief know-how officer, met as College of Washington postdoctoral fellows within the Institute for Protein Design (IPD), which has been pumping out multiple biotech startups in Seattle.

After leaving IPD, the 2 joined up with a staff that included Dr. Stan Riddell, a famend immunotherapy researcher from the Fred Hutchinson Most cancers Heart, to launch Lyell Immunopharma in 2019. Lajoie and Boyken spun off Outpace in 2021 to develop further protein design-based medication.

Outpace is pursuing a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell remedy for sufferers with superior platinum-resistant epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube or major peritoneal cancers. The remedy is on monitor for Investigational New Drug (IND) clearance from the Meals and Drug Administration. The startup hopes to start treating sufferers subsequent 12 months.

Outpace’s Sequence B funding spherical and was led by RA Capital Management, with participation from new buyers Qatar Investment Authority, Surveyor Capital, Sheatree Capital, Black Opal Ventures, Alexandria Venture Investments and different undisclosed buyers.

Current buyers ARTIS Ventures, Playground Global, Bristol Myers Squibb, Abstract Ventures, Civilization Ventures, Mubadala Capital, Breton Capital Ventures, WRF Capital and Sahsen Ventures additionally participated within the spherical.

Outpace has raised $200 million up to now.