Basecamp Research raises $140M to expand AI drug discovery model
Basecamp Research raised $140 million in a Series C led by S32 to expand its EDEN AI model for in vivo cell therapies.
Basecamp's flagship offering is EDEN, a 28-billion-parameter foundation model optimized for medical research. It was trained on the Trillion Gene Atlas, a dataset the company developed with Anthropic, Nvidia and other partners. The dataset contains information on more than 100 billion genes, according to SiliconANGLE. Basecamp's initial focus is using EDEN to help researchers develop in vivo cell therapies, which treat disease by changing some of a patient's cells. In many cases, those changes are made by inserting specially designed DNA sequences into affected cells.
A human cell contains multiple DNA double helices about seven feet long. Each double helix stores what are essentially recipes for making biological building blocks. Messenger molecules regularly read the DNA, create copies of the recipes and carry them to cellular production lines. The biological building blocks produced there power the cell's internal processes. In vivo cell therapies aim to cure disease by modifying these double helices. They temporarily split each affected double helix and add external DNA segments with therapeutic properties. The process is complex in part because cells roll their double helices into tiny coils with a significantly reduced surface area. Developing such a therapy requires researchers to not only design DNA segments but also find a way of inserting them into cells. Basecamp says its software addresses that requirement with so-called large serine recombinases, DNA delivery mechanisms derived from viruses known as bacteriophages.
According to the company, EDEN also eases several related tasks. It helps researchers predict immune responses to a newly developed therapy. The model can be used to develop entire cells, which can be equipped with therapeutic "cargo" that targets disease.
"We believe the future of medicine lies in reprogramming the body to repair itself," said Basecamp co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Glen Gowers. "We design the models and the medicines to teach it how."
The software maker will use its newly raised capital to accelerate its drug development efforts. It also plans to sign more partnerships with pharmaceutical companies that can help bring its AI-designed medicine to market.