Just over a year after launching with $33 million in seed funding, Boston-based Superluminal Medicines is supercharging its small-molecule drug development with a $120 million series A round backed by the likes of Eli Lilly.
Superluminal focuses on G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), which are proteins embedded in the membranes of cells. Cells use membrane receptors to communicate with each other and detect changes to their environment. Thirty-five percent of all drugs target GPCRs, but 70% of the more than 800 GPCRs are currently undrugged, the biotech explained in a Sept. 9 release.
RA Capital Management led the fundraise, joined by new investors Lilly, Catalio Capital Management and Cooley LLP, along with existing backers Insight Partners, Gaingels and NVIDIA’s VC arm NVentures. Superluminal will use the cash to advance its lead asset into the clinic.
“We are advancing six small molecule programs and continue to build a discovery platform to quickly and efficiently generate therapeutics for any membrane drug target,” Superluminal CEO Cony D’Cruz said in a Sept. 9 release.
Superluminal’s platform is designed to analyze the many forms that proteins can take, which D’Cruz said “is critical to identifying specific disease states mediated by membrane receptors.” The company aims to combine chemistry, machine learning and generative biology to identify new drugs rapidly, which explains its choice of name: “Superluminal” is a term used for certain galaxies and other astrophysical phenomena that appear to move faster than the speed of light.
Several other companies are also vying for first place in the GPCR race. Septerna raised $150 million last year to take two GPCR drugs into the clinic and just two months later snagged $47.5 million upfront in a licensing deal with Vertex. Nxera Pharma (formerly known as Sosei Heptares) struck a $27 million deal earlier this year with Boehringer Ingelheim for Nxera’s GPCR schizophrenia drug, while Tectonic Therapeutics merged with Avrobio in January and set GPCR drugs as the combined entity’s primary target.