Antiverse, a UK-based biotech developing AI-designed therapeutic antibodies for undruggable disease targets, has raised £7 million in a Series A round led by Soulmates Ventures, with participation from Innovation Investment Capital and DOMiNO Ventures. The funding brings Antiverse’s total capital raised to over £15 million and will enable it to scale its antibody discovery platform for pharmaceutical and foundation partners, while advancing its internal pipeline toward in vivo efficacy studies.
Drug discovery faces high attrition rates, with roughly 90% of drug candidates failing to reach approval in clinical trials. Antiverse focuses on developing antibodies against challenging targets including G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) and ion channels, which are small, highly dynamic proteins embedded in cell membranes and play roles in diseases such as cancer, neurological disorders, and rare genetic conditions such as cystic fibrosis. More than 200 diseases linked to GPCRs still lack effective treatments, and there are fewer than ten FDA-approved therapeutic antibodies targeting GPCRs.
Using machine learning, Antiverse generates therapeutic antibody candidates for a given disease target, which are built and tested in its own laboratories on proprietary cell models that show the target protein as it appears in the human body. Through this lab-in-the-loop approach, it iterates between computational design and laboratory testing to produce therapeutic-strength antibodies suitable for clinical testing. The finished antibodies are readied for clinical trials and patient treatment.
The Series A investment will support collaborative programmes with pharmaceutical and foundation partners and expand Antiverse’s internal drug pipeline. It has entered into a research agreement with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to design novel antibodies targeting the extracellular region of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator protein. Under the agreement, Antiverse will use its modelling and optimisation platform to design antibodies targeting the extracellular region of CFTR to support the rapid evaluation of emerging therapeutic modalities and accelerate progression from early discovery to patients.
Antiverse has secured partnership agreements with multiple top-20 global pharmaceutical companies, including Nxera, and is looking to progress its first wholly owned candidates into later-stage preclinical development by 2027 while continuing to support pharmaceutical partners with antibody discovery programmes. The global antibody discovery market is projected to surpass USD 20.43 billion by 2034.
Many biologically important targets have remained difficult to drug using conventional antibody discovery methods. 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. 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.
