twoXAR teams up with SoftBank Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and OS Fund to identify new treatments for patients
by: Andrew A. Radin
CEO, twoXAR
Traditionally, building a portfolio of drug programs requires hundreds of millions of dollars and takes many years in the biopharmaceutical industry. The convergence of available biomedical data, affordable cloud computing, and advances in algorithms is now enabling companies to build these drug portfolios for an order of magnitude less money and in a fraction of the time it traditionally takes. This is precisely what twoXAR is doing. Using our artificial intelligence-driven drug discovery platform, we aim to find new, more effective treatments to benefit patients across therapeutic areas.
Today I am proud to share that we have assembled a group of high-quality global investors who will help us achieve this vision. Our Series A, which is led by SoftBank Ventures and followed by the Andreessen Horowitz Bio Fund and OS Fund, will be used to run preliminary preclinical studies, advance current programs in our pipeline, and grow our diversified team. Our investors are deeply aligned with our vision and culture and bring strong operational and global business development support to twoXAR as we continue to build our pipeline of drug programs.
Our computational drug discovery platform helps us rapidly identify drug candidates by uncovering novel disease biology hypotheses supported by real world data. Subsequently, these hypotheses are validated in preclinical studies. The process from launching a new disease program to running preliminary studies and selecting a lead candidate typically takes us about 3 months based on our previous studies in liver cancer, type 2 diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis. We then work with biopharmaceutical companies, KOLs, experienced drug developers, and life science investors to progress these lead candidates to the next stage of drug development. The efficiency and scalability of our technology enables us to run many disease programs in parallel.
This approach is supported by our background research and conversations we’ve had with 100’s of biopharmaceutical researchers, financiers, and executives over the years. As Judy Lewent, a twoXAR Business Advisory Board member and retired EVP & CFO of Merck, stated in our Series A press release, we plan to develop our pipeline through partnerships and spin-outs. This significantly increases the probability of a twoXAR-discovered treatment benefiting patients by putting drug development in the hands of expert drug developers.
We are not selling a tool or service to the biopharmaceutical industry — we are instead partnering our drug programs through typical therapeutic licensing-style deals consisting of upfronts, milestones, and royalties reflecting the stage of the drug candidate.
twoXAR is focused on doing what we do best, applying statistical approaches to increase the probability of treating patients — both in our technology and in our business model. We welcome SoftBank Ventures and OS Fund to the extended twoXAR team which already includes supporters such as Andreessen Horowitz, Judy Lewent, & Stanford StartX. Together we aim to change the lives of patients through the development of more effective therapies.
