T. Rowe Price joined a $200 million Series B round for Burlingame, Calif.-based Genesis Therapeutics, which is harnessing artificial intelligence technologies to create breakthrough medicines for severe diseases. The Baltimore fund giant, which has maintained a sharp focus on life sciences firms, first invested in the startup in its Series A round worth $52 million in 2020.
Genesis said the Series B round was co-led by a U.S.-based life-sciences-focused investor, along with returning investor Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Bio + Health. Other new investors include Fidelity Management & Research Company, BlackRock and chipmaker Nvidia’s venture arm NVentures, alongside existing investors such as Baltimore-based Rock Springs Capital, Menlo Ventures and Canada’s Radical Ventures.
AI Or Bust
Emerging as a pioneer of sorts, Genesis leverages AI-enabled programs for clinical development — promising novel discoveries at startling speed. It continues to invest heavily in the development of Genesis Exploration of Molecular Space, or GEMS, a state-of-the-art generative and predictive AI platform. Genesis has not yet revealed disease targets claims a ready drug candidate.
“AI presents a potent opportunity to revolutionize the drug discovery process, which frequently struggles to produce viable drug candidates against targets that are biologically well-validated but considered undruggable due to highly challenging chemistry,” said Genesis CEO Evan Feinberg, who earned his Ph.D. in Stanford University before pursuing AI-based drug discovery.
“This funding comes as Genesis is approaching an inflection point with the first of our AI-enabled drug candidates entering the clinic,” Feinberg added. “The addition of our new lead investor, and other meaningful additions to our biotech and AI-oriented syndicate, will support Genesis in developing breakthrough therapies for patients with severe unmet medical needs”
Vijay Pande, Ph.D., the founding general partner at a16z Bio + Health, co-invented some of Genesis’ deep-learning technologies. He was then the Henry Dreyfus professor of Chemistry and professor of Structural Biology and of Computer Science at Stanford University.
“Genesis has uniquely integrated deep learning and simulations since inception, and the ability of their GEMS AI platform to address previously undruggable targets is a testament to Genesis’ leadership in molecular generative AI,” said Pande, who worked closely with Feinberg at Stanford.
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Genesis runs a fully integrated laboratory in San Diego, Calif., and has collaborations with Genentech and Eli Lilly.
Life Sciences Focus
T. Rowe Price, which has over $1.6 trillion in assets under management, has made over 300 portfolio investments and exited over 100. It revealed a significant focus on life sciences last year, investing in startups such as Senti, Convoy, Sionna Therapeutics, Tessera Therapeutics, Cross River, SandboxAQ, PrognonIQ, RefleXion, Rigetti Computing and Cellink. Most recently, the firm invested in ADARx Pharmaceuticals.
Baltimore-based Rock Springs Capital has made over 100 portfolio investments since Kris Jenner, a former T. Rowe Price executive, established it in 2013 as a focused health-sciences fund. It has raised $1.5 billion from investors. Rock Springs’ recent portfolio investments include Hemab, Spruce Biosciences, Zenas BioPharma, Treeline Biosciences, Immatics Biotechnologies, Kymera Therapeutics, Disc Medicine and Delfi Diagnostics.
