Turbine, a company that uses cell simulations to guide biopharma R&D and bring the right drug to every patient in need, has successfully added €5.5 million from MassMutual Ventures (MMV) to its recently closed Series A financing round. This investment brings the company’s oversubscribed Series A round to €25.5 million and adds further U.S.-based investors to the company’s financing syndicate. Alongside the funding, Turbine announced the appointments of four independent directors to its board.
Today’s milestones add to Turbine’s recent momentum, which has included building cutting-edge lab facilities in Budapest and entering a significant collaboration with Cancer Research Horizons. The latest funding will be used to advance Turbine’s internal pipeline of simulation-guided programs, while scaling its biology simulation platform to support additional partnerships.
“Turbine’s platform overcomes the limitations of traditional drug discovery approaches by combining cell simulation and machine learning to uncover novel cancer therapies and the patients most likely to benefit from them,” said Anvesh Ramineni, Managing Partner at MMV. “We believe Turbine’s unique approach has tremendous potential to guide biopharma R&D in a new direction using actionable insights gathered from deep expertise in the simulation of biological mechanisms – we look forward to working with Turbine to help unlock its full potential.”
Founded in 2015, Turbine’s simulations can represent patient populations that existing biological models cannot. They also have the capacity to perform assays that would be impractical to conduct at scale and with high throughput. A proprietary closed-loop learning process validates promising hypotheses in Turbine’s in vitro and in vivo assays, leading to a constantly evolving model of cancer biology.
The result is an innovation engine that continues to reveal novel targets, biomarkers and drug combinations that have been experimentally validated and are often missed by existing methods such as CRISPR. Clinically, these targets have been associated with patient populations with high unmet need. Supported by companies such as Bayer and MSD (Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway NJ, USA), Turbine has multiple in vivo validated novel assets in its proprietary and partnered pipeline.
“The support of MassMutual Ventures, a leading global investor with close ties to the U.S. market, and the enthusiasm of the experts who have joined our board validate Turbine’s potential,” said Szabolcs Nagy, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Turbine. “These individuals have personally built leading technology platforms supercharging drug development globally. Their buy-in shows that our platform is differentiated and poised to unlock truly novel therapies for currently underserved patient populations through efficient, simulation-guided development. With the additional funding and board appointments, we are set to accelerate the validation of our approach by advancing multiple programs and partnerships toward the ultimate test of any biopharma technology platform – human clinical trials.”
