Arpeggio Biosciences has raised $17 million in series A funding in a round led by Builders VC.
Support for the U.S.-based preclinical therapeutics company making technology targeting transcriptional dysregulation in disease, also came from its seed round investors.
These include Khosla Ventures, TechU Ventures, FundersClub, Alice Zhang, and Fifty Years, as well as new participants Tencent, ATEM Capital, Formic Ventures, Tau Ventures, Milad Alucozai (BoxOne Ventures), and Matthew De Silva (Longtail Capital).
The new capital will support the ongoing development of their drug pipeline targeting transcriptional mechanisms in disease.
Discovering therapies
Joey Azofeifa founder, and CEO of Arpeggio Biosciences, said: “This series A funding will enable us to continue our mission of discovering new therapies for diseases arising through dysregulation of transcription.
“Our platform screens drug libraries for their effect on thousands of gene and non-coding transcripts, allowing for the first time, the design of molecules to modulate not just a single target but a cell’s entire transcriptome.”
About Arpeggio Biosciences
Along with Azofeifa, the company was established in 2018 by co-founders chief technology officer, Tim Read and chief operating officer, Laura Norris. Its platform, developed by the trio, has built the largest database of nascent-RNA sequences in the world.
Cellular dynamics
The company’s technology combines a proprietary biological assay and machine learning algorithms that together enable rapid high-resolution snapshots of cellular dynamics following drug treatment.
These snapshots are then analyzed to reveal the biological networks that determine a drug’s function and guide therapeutic development. To date, Arpeggio has contracted with more than 40 pharmaceutical companies to assess the impact of diverse classes of molecules on cellular transcription.