Vilya, a biotech startup built off technology developed at the Seattle-based Institute for Protein Design, announced an expanded $71 million Series A investment round.
The 2-year-old company, which has operations in Seattle and the Bay Area, uses advanced machine learning and AI techniques to help develop so-called macrocyclic drugs, a promising new type of medicine.
Vilya’s backers include biotech investor ARCH Venture Partners, as well as NVIDIA’s venture capital arm NVentures and other top firms including Seattle-based Madrona and Silicon Valley heavyweight Menlo Ventures.
“The current state of the art in discovering macrocycle drugs is slow and relies on legacy screening techniques with limited chemical diversity,” Madrona wrote in blog post Thursday about its investment. “Vilya is upending the status quo, leveraging best-in-class protein engineering tools to crack the code on intelligently designing these complex but powerful molecules.”
Vilya is one of several spinouts from the Institute for Protein Design, led by protein design pioneer David Baker.
Earlier this year the IPD published a study in Science on designing specialized peptides, sleek ultra-small proteins that form the basis for Vilya.
AI-powered protein design is being used to create new therapeutics, vaccines, biosensors, materials and more. The field is moving fast, and IPD research is behind many of the advances.
Vilya last year hired biotech vet Cyrus Harmon as its CEO. Harmon previously co-founded and led Olema Oncology.
Vilya has 40 employees, with about a quarter in the Seattle region. The company previously raised $50 million for its Series A round.
“Our platform is built on ground-breaking research in advanced computational approaches and taps into uncharted chemical space within cyclic peptides to design new molecular structures not found in nature,” the company says on its LinkedIn profile. “We aim to boldly leverage cutting edge computing to change how we design new medicines, and to ultimately cure diseases.”
