CHARM launches AI drug discovery technology with $50M Series A financing

CHARM Therapeutics, a 3D deep-learning research company discovering and developing medicines, announces a $50M Series A financing co-led by F-Prime Capital and OrbiMed for DragonFold AI technology.

CHARM Therapeutics ensures end-to-end 3D deep-learning to discover and develop transformational medicines against previously hard-to-drug targets. The company’s proprietary platform, DragonFold, applies expertise in protein-ligand co-folding to deliver transformational medicines targeting challenging molecular targets in cancer and other disease areas.

“3D deep-learning on macromolecular configurations represents a new era in drug discovery. The work of David Baker in predicting highly accurate three-dimensional structures of proteins offers potential to explore new frontiers in medicine, approaching disease targets previously considered undruggable.

"CHARM Therapeutics has been created to combine these breakthroughs in 3D deep-learning with excellence in drug discovery and development,” said Gary D. Glick Ph.D., executive chair of CHARM Therapeutics. “With the support of these high-quality new investors, we look forward to realising these goals.”

Leveraging end-to-end 3D deep-learning to predict protein-ligand co-crystal structure

Structure-based drug design has had a significant impact on drug discovery, but its full potential has been limited by three fundamental challenges: first, determining non-orthosteric binding sites; second, predicting the joint pose of a ligand bound to a flexible protein; and third, predicting the strength of the binding interactions, which is an intricate interplay between enthalpy and entropy. 

CHARM Therapeutics’ proprietary DragonFold technology, developed by David Baker and Laksh Aithani, uses end-to-end 3D deep-learning to predict the co-crystal structure of a protein-ligand complex based on a protein's primary sequence and the ligand’s chemical structure.

“Due to the end-to-end nature of DragonFold, it has the potential to simultaneously determine the binding site and model induced fit as well as predict the pose and affinity of the ligand, thus unlocking the true potential of structure-based drug design,” said Laksh Aithani, co-founder, chief executive officer and board member of CHARM Therapeutics. “We are advancing this technology and its application to the hit discovery, hit-to-lead and lead optimisation processes of small molecule drug discovery.”

CHARM is building a robust engine to translate these 3D predictions into small molecule therapeutics that modulate challenging targets, initially in cancer, with the potential to transform the lives of patients.