Ashwin Nandakumar and Ashwin Jainarayanan have been engaged on their doctorates at adjoining departments in Oxford, however they didn’t know one another. Nandakumar, who was learning oncology, at some point stumbled throughout a curious dataset for prostate most cancers, with which he wanted sequencing assist.
“I reached out to some buddies asking to assist me analyze this information,” Nandakumar mentioned. “They mentioned,’ There’s one other man with the identify Ashwin, you must join with him.’”
The 2 Ashwins immediately clicked, and shortly after their assembly, they started working within the lab of Jainarayanan’s tutorial adviser, Michael Dustin, a professor of molecular immunology.
When Nandakumar and Jainarayanan have been on the point of graduate, they initially deliberate to get jobs with giant pharmaceutical firms. However they have been additionally fascinated by Dustin’s analysis. “Mike found a complete new characteristic of the immune system that individuals didn’t know existed,” Nandakumar mentioned.
Nandakumar and Jainarayanan determined to discover the concept of turning that analysis into an organization. They have been launched to Y-Combinator’s bio associate, Surbhi Sarna, and she or he satisfied the 2 Ashwins to use to the storied accelerator.
“That dialog modified our lives,” Nandakumar mentioned. “We determined we’re not becoming a member of Huge Pharma. We’re going to make our personal Huge Pharma.”
Nandakumar, Jainarayanan and Dustin shaped Granza Bio, a biotech startup engaged on a novel strategy to delivering immunotherapy and different “assault particles” to numerous components of the physique. The 2 Ashwins entered the YC Winter 24 batch.
Granza’s strategy drew quite a lot of curiosity from traders. “Our plan initially was to boost $2.5 million to get very essential experiments finished,” Nandakumar mentioned. “We began fundraising on [a] Wednesday and hit that focus on on a Friday.”
Since traders have been lining as much as spend money on Granza, the 2 Ashwins determined to boost a much bigger spherical that will permit them to develop the biotech’s analysis past the preliminary experimentation section.
On Wednesday, Granaza Bio introduced that it has raised a $7.14 million seed spherical led by Felicis and Refactor, with participation of Y Combinator.
Granza Bio match completely into Felicis’ thesis: that the physique’s personal immune system might be activated to deal with cancers and different autoimmune illnesses,Tobi Coker, deal associate at Felicis, instructed TechCrunch. “The analysis out of Professor Dustin’s lab is totally novel,” Coker mentioned, including that Granza’s strategy to the supply of therapeutics throughout organ techniques may have broad functions in oncology and autoimmune illness remedy.
Whereas Felicis is greatest generally known as a agency that made early bets on tech firms like Notion, Canva, Adyen, Cruise, Flexport and Shopify, the 18-year-old enterprise outfit isn’t a stranger to the biotech funding world. About 10% to fifteen% of the agency’s capital is invested in biology-focused startups, Coker mentioned. Felicis’ best-known life sciences firms embrace now-publicly traded Gingko Bioworks and Recursion Prescription drugs.
“I believe we’ve got an excellent eye for brand spanking new technological paradigms and potential platform firms,” Coker mentioned. (In biotech, platform firms concentrate on creating underlying instruments that might be used to develop quite a few therapies.)
Felicis and different traders in Granza Bio are having a bet that the startup’s therapeutic cargo supply mechanism can ultimately assist develop a complete host of recent medication.
