Toronto-based biotech startup, Phenomic AI has raised 7.97M CAD in a seed funding round held in October 2020, led by CTI Life Sciences Fund along with AV8 Ventures, Luminous Ventures, and Viva BioInnovator. Existing investors Garage Capital, Hike Ventures and Cantos Ventures also participated in the round.
Proceeds from the funding round will be used to back preclinical studies for two authorized cancer drug targets discovered on Phenomic AI’s platform. It will also be used to identify and bring forward additional drug targets.
CEO Sam Cooper founded Phenomic AI in 2017 that is a drug discovery startup for cancer and fibrosis. The startup’s platform integrates cutting-edge AI/ML tools to enable the screening of multifaceted interactions in multi-cell systems to determine new drug targets that arise from cell-cell interactions and find drugs for cancer. Before launching, Phenomic was involved in numerous proof-of-concept studies and collaborations to recognize what domain of biology its platform was best at solving. The startup did these researches in a vigilant and cautious manner and henceforth has acknowledged cancer therapies as its niche domain of biology.
The startup intends to utilize technology to address hurdles to drug discovery that arise with the tissue lump stroma. In solid lumps, stroma includes connective tissue, blood vessels, and, many times, inflammatory cells, all of which are in between the malicious cells and normal host tissues. The fact that there are many dissimilar types of cells in a stroma makes treatment and drug detection in this area quite difficult. Phenomic AI’s platform uses deep learning tools for image and genetic study and to discover drugs and treatments for the tissue lump stroma.
Phenomic AI also has workplaces in Boston. The startup has increased its headcount and added Dr. Michael Briskin as chief scientific officer, while Nobel laureate James P. Allison and Padmanee Sharma have joined the company’s scientific advisory board.
It had secured $2M in a pre-seed funding round held in June 2018, from Radical Ventures, Cantos, Inovia Capital, Hike Ventures, Ramen Ventures and CTI Life Sciences Fund.
About CTI Life Sciences Fund
Montreal-based CTI Life Sciences is a venture capital firm. It makes venture capital investments in high value emerging life sciences enterprises at the pre-clinical and clinical development stage in Canada and in the U.S. CTI currently manages $245 million of assets. Two of its celebrated successes to date have been the sale of Enobia Pharma to Alexion for US$ 1.1B and the Initial Public Offering of Zymeworks on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
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