Antiverse Raises $9.3M Series A to Develop Antibodies for Undruggable Disease Targets and Announces Research Agreement with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation

• Funding to accelerate internal pipeline and advance lead antibody programs toward in vivo efficacy studies

• AI-driven, lab-in-the-loop platform designs, builds, and validates therapeutic-strength antibodies in-house

CARDIFF, Wales--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Antiverse, an AI-driven techbio company designing therapeutic antibodies for the most challenging disease targets, today announced the close of a $9.3 million Series A financing, led by Soulmates Ventures with participation from Innovation Investment Capital, DOMiNO Ventures and existing investors DBW, Kadmos Capital and i&i Biotech Fund. This brings the total funding raised to over $20 million since inception.

The financing will support expansion of Antiverse’s proprietary AI antibody design platform, accelerate development of its internal therapeutic pipeline, and advance lead antibody programs toward in vivo efficacy studies, while continuing to expand pharmaceutical and research collaborations.

Antiverse has also entered into a research agreement with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CF Foundation) to design novel antibodies targeting the extracellular region of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) protein, a historically difficult target in cystic fibrosis research.

Cystic fibrosis is a progressive genetic disease caused by mutations in the CFTR gene that disrupt chloride transport, leading to the buildup of thick mucus that damages the lungs, pancreas, and other organs. In particular, the extracellular portion of the CFTR protein has remained notoriously difficult to target using conventional antibody discovery technologies, and improved research tools are essential for advancing new therapeutic approaches.

Under the agreement, Antiverse will use its AI-driven modelling and optimisation platform to design antibodies targeting the extracellular region of CFTR. Candidates will be screened and validated through Antiverse’s proprietary lab-in-the-loop workflow including hyper-expressing cell-line testing before transferring the optimised antibodies to the Foundation’s dedicated lab for testing in natively-expressing cell models. This agreement to design novel extracellular CFTR antibodies for CF research is designed to support the rapid evaluation of emerging therapeutic modalities and help accelerate progression from early discovery to patients.

“Many biologically important targets have remained difficult to drug using conventional antibody discovery methods,” said Murat Tunaboylu, Co-Founder and CEO, Antiverse. “This Series A financing enables us to scale our generative antibody design platform, accelerate our internal pipeline, and expand strategic collaborations such as our work with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, where our technology is applied to explore challenging targets like extracellular CFTR. Together, these efforts help inform future research efforts and allow Antiverse to continue advancing our own therapeutic programs for patients.”

“Antiverse is tackling one of the most technically demanding problems in drug discovery,” said Michal Sikyta, Managing Partner at Soulmates Ventures. “The team’s ability to reduce the development time for de novo therapeutic-grade antibodies in a defined domain to under four months is a significant scientific and operational achievement. This capability, combined with the AI-driven design and in-house labs, positions Antiverse on track to become a global leader and the go-to developer of antibody therapies for the most elusive disease targets in medicine.”

Antiverse is developing next-generation computational antibody design technology to enable therapeutic development against challenging drug targets, including G-protein coupled receptors and ion channels. Built on seven years of generative model training across difficult targets, the platform enables the design of epitope-specific antibodies while optimising key physicochemical properties and humanness, allowing Antiverse to rapidly move from target identification to functional antibodies.

The company combines this AI-driven design capability with proprietary programmable cell-line engineering and in-house laboratory validation, creating a rapid lab-in-the-loop workflow for iterative design, build, and testing. Antiverse supports a range of collaboration models, enabling programs to be tailored to the scientific and strategic needs of pharmaceutical, biotech, and foundation partners.

Antiverse has secured partnership agreements with multiple top-20 global pharmaceutical companies, and has initiated a discovery collaboration with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to design research tool antibodies targeting extracellular CFTR protein. The company is now looking to progress its first wholly owned candidates into later-stage preclinical development by 2027, while continuing to support pharmaceutical partners with antibody discovery programs.

About Antiverse

Antiverse is an AI-driven techbio company specialising in de novo antibody design for the most challenging drug targets, including G-protein coupled receptors and ion channels. Headquartered in Cardiff, UK, with offices in Boston and Prague, Antiverse combines proprietary datasets, advanced machine learning techniques, and programmable cell-line engineering to develop next-generation antibody therapeutics. For more information, visit www.antiverse.io.

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