The tedious process of drug discovery is getting an artificial intelligence boost from San Francisco startup Monomer Bio. The company announced $5.6 million in new seed funding, led by Talis Capital, to further develop its AI-powered platform for automating laboratory workflows in pharmaceutical research.
Drug discovery has traditionally relied on manual screening of molecular libraries to identify potential drug compounds. This repetitive lab work creates bottlenecks, while the trial-and-error process of matching a molecule to a therapeutic target remains expensive and inefficient. But Monomer Bio aims to use automation, data analytics and machine learning to help researchers rapidly conduct more sophisticated experiments that explore the disease-fighting potential of promising new molecules.
Monomer’s platform seamlessly integrates robotic equipment with optimized informatics support. Customers like Indee Labs have already seen major gains in cell sample production. By minimizing manual errors in handling cell cultures and gene therapies, while also digitizing analysis of changes observed under the microscope, Monomer frees up researcher time and paves the way for next-generation biotech investigations.
The company’s co-founders also highlight Monomer’s commitment to user accessibility for scientists in labs of all sizes. CEO Jimmy Sastra said the new investment will help Monomer “empower many more scientists, in laboratories of all sizes, to harness the power of automation.” With improved efficiency, scalability and actionable insights powered by artificial intelligence, the Monomer platform represents an exciting step into a new era of data-driven, digital drug discovery.
tl;dr:
- Monomer Bio has raised $5.6 million in seed funding to develop an AI-powered lab automation and analytics platform to accelerate drug discovery. The funding was led by Talis Capital.
- Monomer’s platform integrates robotic lab automation with data management and analytics to help scientists conduct more complex experiments at larger scale to explore new drugs.
- The software provides actionable insights with deep learning to detect significant changes in cell morphology from microscope images to inform drug development.
- Monomer aims to simplify data and automation for researchers so they can focus on their work rather than manual bottlenecks.
- The funding will help Monomer expand its platform that saves time, improves efficiency, and removes hurdles in scaling up cell and gene therapy capabilities that rely on error-prone manual work.
In summary, Monomer Bio has secured funding to build AI-powered lab automation to revolutionize the drug discovery process by enabling more advanced, scalable experiments for biotech companies and research organizations.