U.S. biotech company Ordaōs has raised $5 million in seed financing to aid in new product development and expand partner acquisition efforts.
The oversubscribed round was led by Middleland Capital’s VTC Ventures with additional investments from Route 66 Ventures, Banyan Pacific Capital, IAG Capital Partners, and Citta Capital.
Ordaōs is a drug design company that creates mini-proteins that enable targeted therapies to reduce patient suffering, improve health, and extend life.
“Ordaōs’ class of mini-proteins, – Ordaōs miniPRO – transforms the role of proteins in drug discovery by providing the power and performance of antibodies, while being more stable, configurable and easier to manufacture,” said David Longo, CEO of Ordaōs.
“This investment will enable us to maximize drug candidate delivery speed, novelty, and probability of clinical success that provides drug hunters what they have been dreaming of.”
Scott Horner, managing director at Middleland Capital said, “We have been studying the AI drug discovery sector for some time and were blown away at how effective the Ordaōs platform is in generating high-affinity hits, across several difficult to access drug targets. This team has built something really special here, and we are excited to partner with the company to realize the full potential of their novel mini-protein creation platform.”
Design Engine
Ordaōs uses The Ordaōs Design Engine to deliver protein property design – leveraging continuous learning loops and datasets to translate human-targeted product criteria into machine-designed mini-proteins.
Starting with amino acids, the Design Engine generates, appraises, and ranks billions of protein sequences and hundreds of thousands of protein structures and properties to create customized miniPRO proteins.
These proteins are then evaluated in vitro to provide feedback on multiple design objectives including protein structure, binding specificity and affinity, solubility, stability, immunogenicity, and developability.
The company said the process delivers optimized mini-proteins to meet the client’s specific molecular target product profile (mTPP). Ordaōs said they are also less likely to cause adverse side effects and are easier and less expensive to test, develop, and manufacture than traditional proteins.
Using this approach, the company said its Ordaōs Design Engine increases the probability of more therapeutically effective candidates.