Deep Science Ventures

Following up their recent fundraising announcement, Antiverse have secured a multi-year, multi-target partnership agreement with up front and milestones with Nxera (extra points for perfect pronunciation). GPCR-targeting drugs are the largest family of drug discovery targets – comprising 1/3 of all FDA approved drugs - they generated $160bn in revenue in 2022 alone. They're also one of the most difficult targets to develop for (we in the marketing team had this difficulty described to us as owing to the 'floppiness' of receptors; apparently not a technical term). Nxera is the 4th most successful company by cumulative license value in the world (since 2015) and specialises in GPCRs. This is one of the first major partnerships of this kind that we've been able to announce for a DSV portfolio company, we're very proud of the team!

Scalpel AI announce £3.8m in investment led by Mercia Asset Management PLC. Scalpel AI is not a fully autonomous knife (thankfully), but rather a technology to significantly increase the efficiency and safety of surgical operating theatres. Dr Dr Yeshwanth Pulijala (he has a PhD and is a medical doctor so he gets to double up) has been on this journey since he personally witnessed a 'never' event (an event that ought never happen) in the operating theatre and joined DSV to ensure that 'never' really means never. More on the round and the company on the link in comments!

🌍 We Are Inviting Interest in a Founding Role for Zero-Emission Steel Innovation! We are seeking expressions of interest for a Founding Role in an ambitious Green Steel venture being developed at Deep Science Ventures, designed to tackle one of the most significant industrial contributors to carbon emissions. In this flexible role—suited to either Advisors or Co-Founders—you will work alongside the DSV team to drive the development of groundbreaking, net-zero ironmaking solutions, with the aim of spinning out a new company by Q2 2025. This venture is focused on creating scalable, sustainable pathways to zero-emission steel, addressing the global impact of steel production and aligning with Anglo American's goal of reducing Scope 3 emissions by 50% by 2040. By joining us, you’ll be at the forefront of transforming the steel industry, contributing to a commercially viable solution that meets both market demand and environmental priorities. If you're excited about driving transformative change in the steel industry and have the expertise to make a real impact, we would love to hear from you! This is your chance to be part of a pioneering team shaping a sustainable future for steel production. Please apply via the link to join us on this journey to net-zero emissions and global innovation! #hiring #greensteel #netzero

$3m in ARPA-H funding to solve bacterial vaginosis for Alexandra Sakatos and the team at Ancilia Biosciences, awarded as one of 23/1,700 proposals to Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H)'s "Sprint for Women's Health program". Alex is just such a brilliant example of an epic female venture scientist taking on a massive, neglected problem. And this is the first funding award to a DSV company announced by someone who lives in the White House, first Lady Jill Biden - Ancilia is apparently considering changing their name to AnJillia in her honour, though reports of this are as of yet 'unconfirmed'. Link to the full article, which explains how their solution works, in comments!

We're excited to announce that our portfolio company Dunia have secured over $11 million in funding, co-led by Elaia and redalpine. This makes it *just about* worth the hundreds of quid we spent on notaries to incorporate the company in Berlin. Other backers include the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA), Pace Ventures, Sequoia Capital scout fund, Kindred Capital VC, as well as angels such as Chris Gibson (co-founder and CEO of recursion), Dr. Udo Jung (former MD of BCG), Lee Cronin (Prof. Emeritus of chemistry at Glasgow and founder of Chemify), Alexander Weber, Carlos Haertel (former CTO of Climeworks) and Sebastian Ruder (at Cohere, formerly at Google DeepMind). Dunia was built at Deep Science Ventures by Alexander Hammer, Ahmed S. M. Ismail and Marcus Tze-Kiat Ng; with the build from the DSV side being led by Adam Tomassi-Russell and Pina Fritz, PhD and early funding from the Net Zero Technology Centre. The company accelerates electrocatalyst R&D 10x through the deployment of their self-driving lab, Iris. The lab doesn't actually drive anywhere, but it does drive much faster materials discovery. Dunia was designed as part of our "closing the carbon loop thesis", initially developed by Gaël Gobaille-Shaw, who went on to co-found Mission Zero Technologies and Supercritical Solutions, with a view to providing a cheap alternative carbon source as a competitor to petrochemically derived carbon - more specifically, to enable us to close the loop on carbon-based fuels. Very proud of the team and cannot wait to pull up outside of the Berghain in their self-driving lab one day.

When Murat Tunaboylu joined DSV he was hell bent on developing something that many people with significantly more expertise told him was impossible. One expert, in an effort to dissuade him, pointed out that there were more possible convolutions of the proteins he was trying to design then there were atoms in the universe. Haidin Rashid, another founder in our first cohort told Murat to lean into the impossible objective of navigating the vast darkness of the antibody universe - the 'Antiverse'. Joining up with Ben H. and Rowina Westermeier, PhD, the team realised (without spending a second in a lab) that simply combining known concepts across disciplinary boundaries could unlock the possibility of rational, in silico design of one of the universe's most complicated organic molecules. We absolutely never tire of this story, it's what made us shift to think about perception of impossibility as a barrier to entry, what led us to make outcomes the start and end of our venture creation journey and to stay broad in our mission as opposed to narrowing into a single domain. We're very excited that Antiverse have secured a further £3.5m in capital to prosecute their impossible vision! Not least because Murat promised us all hoodies if the round closed. Thanks too to the incredible investors they've brought on the journey: Tensor Ventures (congrats on the new fund!), Future Planet Capital, Innospark Ventures, i&i Biotech Fund, Kadmos Capital Ltd and AngelHub. More info in the link in comments. Phew. Managed to get a post out during Nobel Prize season without mentioning it once!

Really fantastic article by Karen Spink, Head of Medicines at Innovate UK, on the current landscape for childhood cancer therapeutics. Not to mention the fact that she says really very complementary things about the report we wrote together... 👀

We're #hiring a new Engineer, Constant Clean Power (mid to senior level) in Greater London, England. Apply today or share this post with your network.

🚨Hiring Alert🚨 We are developing a technology to cure paediatric cancer and prevent any future re-emergence and recruiting a co-founder to join the team to do this. Our approach harnesses the childhood immune system and re-targets it against tumours - flipping what has been a historic oversight (assuming that children are just "mini adults"). This comes on the back of our white paper with Innovate UK earlier in the year, during which we conducted a systematic exploration of the solution space. Please do help us amplify the opportunity - it could be someone's absolute dream job. Both the opportunity and the white paper are linked in the comments!

Announcing both the creation and pre-seed round of Kairos Carbon, led by Zero Carbon Capital! Kairos sets out to do for wet waste what biochar does for dry biomass, creating a >1000y permanent carbon removal pathway through a hyper-efficient, advanced hydrothermal processing system to break down waste. Kairos has an approach that: - Can plausibly achieve <$50 /tCO2t by leveraging the efficiencies of natural CDR and the quality of engineered CDR - Is extremely energy efficient (<100kWh/t, with the potential to be energy positive) - Can recover 100% of carbon (in contrast to hydrothermal carbonisation, torrefaction, fast or slow pyrolysis - all of which recover only part of the carbon) - Ensures >1000y permanence - Works with wet biomass of any water content (in contrast to e.g. pyrolysis which requires <25% water content) - Works with any bio-based feedstock including sludge, manure, paper pulp, food waste… (in contrast to chars and pyrolysis which typically require wood) - Produces clean water (in contrast to e.g. DAC which typically consumes water) - Destroys toxic ‘forever’ pollutants like PFAS - Recovers valuable inorganics like phosphorous Kairos's website and post announcing the round in comments! Congrats to Daniel Murray, Megha Raghavan, the DSV Climate team Noah Geeves, Adam Tomassi-Russell, Pina Fritz, PhD and the exceptional folks at ZCC for seeing the potential, Sarah Jones, Pippa Gawley, Alex Gawley and our friends at The Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment for seeding the work Kevin Tidwell, Cyril Yee, Sam Lefkofsky, Elena Cavallero