Ten63 Therapeutics Secures Strategic Investment, Bringing Total Funding to Over $45M

Ten63 Therapeutics announced that it has secured strategic investment from Chugai Venture Fund and the Gates Foundation, bringing the Research Triangle Park-based company's total funding to more than $45 million. The financing is designed to accelerate the expansion of BEYOND, Ten63's Large Quantum Chemistry Model (LQCM) and AI-driven drug discovery platform.

The increased funding will fuel the advancement of Ten63's proprietary computational drug discovery platform, BEYOND. BEYOND is the world's first Large Quantum Chemistry Model, delivering precise quantum-mechanics level simulations that are orders of magnitude faster than other cutting-edge computational approaches. The platform is built to simulate trillions of potential drug candidates per protein target with near experimental accuracy, according to the company, at speeds that exceed traditional computational chemistry approaches by orders of magnitude.

The company says BEYOND enables the pursuit of previously undruggable targets, which correspond to 80% of all proteins in the human body. Ten63 has multiple programs showing its platform can overcome previously intractable problems. One such program focuses on Myc, one of the most-studied oncogenes, which has long been considered undruggable and is believed to drive 70% of all cancers. Despite hundreds of attempts spanning 40 years, it remains elusive. With the mathematical breakthroughs behind BEYOND, Ten63 has Myc-targeting therapeutics in active development that surpass all previous attempts at Myc inhibition.

Powered by BEYOND, the company is pursuing a pipeline of first- and best-in-class small molecules against some of the most impactful oncology targets. The company said its simulation environment allows AI systems to explore and learn from trillions of molecular possibilities millions of times faster than physical laboratory methods, while retaining experimental-level accuracy.

New investors, the Gates Foundation and Chugai Venture Fund, RYSE, K5 Global, SF Holdings, Duke Capital Partners, Cape Fear BioCapital, Black Opal Ventures, and Panorama, joined Ten63's existing syndicate, including Hatteras Venture Partners, Yosemite, Morpheus Ventures, Alexandria Venture Investments, and Draper Associates, in the latest funding round. In connection with the financing, a Managing Director of Chugai Venture Fund joined Ten63's board of directors.

In connection with the investment, Ten63 also received a grant from the Gates Foundation to support a global strategy to address one of the deadliest cancers worldwide: cervical cancer. Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the world. Some strains of HPV are high-risk and can lead to cancers, like cervical, vulvar, and vaginal cancers. Each year, HPV causes cancer in more than 650,000 women and men. Ten63's BEYOND platform is being used to develop cost-effective and safe treatments for HPV lesions worldwide by tackling the viral proteins that lead to cancer and have so far been undruggable.

Ten63 is an advanced AI drug-discovery company that was a Duke and TTIC spin-out, headquartered in the Research Triangle in North Carolina. The company is advancing an internal oncology pipeline while also pursuing select strategic partnerships across multiple disease indications.