A promising biotech company
Xaira Therapeutics has secured over $1 billion in initial funding
Xaira Therapeutics, a newly launched biotechnology company, aims to transform the drug discovery and development process by leveraging advanced AI technologies.
Here are a few key points:
Co-founded by Dr. David Baker and incubated by ARCH Venture Partners and Foresite Labs, Xaira has secured over $1 billion in initial funding, marking the largest commitment in ARCH's history.
The company combines extensive AI research, vast data generation, and robust therapeutic product development.
Led by Dr. Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Xaira aims to accelerate the creation of effective therapies by integrating cutting-edge computational methods and biological data across all stages of drug development.
The initiative involves a team of leading scientists and executives with significant industry experience, supported by a distinguished board including Nobel laureate Dr. Carolyn Bertozzi and former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb.
The board of directors includes:
Vikram Bajaj, Ph.D, Co-Founder and CEO, Foresite Labs; Managing Director, Foresite Capital
Carolyn Bertozzi, Ph.D., Baker Family Director of Sarafan ChEM-H; Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor; Professor (by courtesy) of Chemical and Systems Biology and of Radiology, Stanford University; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Nobel Prize (2022)
Kaye Foster, M.B.A., Senior Advisor, The Boston Consulting Group, and former SVP, Global Human Resources, Onyx Pharmaceuticals, former CHRO, Johnson & Johnson
Alex Gorsky, M.B.A., Former Chairman and CEO, Johnson & Johnson
Scott Gottlieb, M.D., Former FDA Commissioner, Partner, NEA
Stephen Knight, M.D., President & Managing Partner, F-Prime
Mathai Mammen, M.D., Ph.D., Chairman and CEO of FogPharma and Former EVP, Pharmaceuticals R&D, Johnson & Johnson
Robert Nelsen, M.B.A., Co-Founder and Managing Director, ARCH Venture Partners
Richard Scheller, Ph.D., Chairman of R&D, BridgeBio; former Chief Scientific Officer and Head of Therapeutics at 23andMe, and the former Executive Vice President of Research and Early Development at Genentech; Lasker Award (2013)
Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Ph.D., CEO Xaira; former President, Stanford University & Rockefeller University; former Chief Scientific Officer, Genentech
Bryan White, M.B.A. Chair, Advisory Board, the Institute for Protein Design; Co-Founder and Chief Investment Officer, Sahsen Ventures; former CIO Quadra/Quellos and Blackrock Alternative Advisors
Is this a sign of recovery in the healthtech/medtech space? Perhaps not, yet this remains a significant development.
Things I’m reading today
US: President Biden has signed the ByteDance-TikTok divestiture or ban bill into law following its passage in the Senate by a vote of 79-18; the House had earlier approved the bill with a vote of 360-58 on April 20 (Via Lauren Feiner/The Verge)
Apple has introduced OpenELM, a new suite of large language models featuring 270 million, 450 million, 1.1 billion, and 3 billion parameters. These models are engineered to operate on-device and have been pre-trained and fine-tuned using publicly available data (Via Shubham Sharma/VentureBeat)
