Perpetual Medicines, a biotech firm with operations in Shanghai and Boston, has officially launched, announcing an $8 million seed financing round led by Chengwei Capital. The company has appointed Dr. Kerry Blanchard as co-founder and CEO, following his recent departure from Everest Medicines in August.
Perpetual aims to develop an integrated computational design and synthesis platform for peptide drug discovery. According to Blanchard, the company seeks to leverage advancements in artificial intelligence, deep learning, and machine learning to explore the vast, untapped peptide chemical space for drug discovery. Peptides, which are chains of amino acids, can interact with proteins both inside and outside of cells, making them valuable for therapeutic development. Perpetual’s platform enables the virtual modeling of millions of peptide sequences to predict binding and drug-like properties, thereby accelerating the discovery process.
The seed financing will support the advancement of Perpetual’s lead preclinical candidate into trials, with a focus on oncology, autoimmunity, and metabolic diseases. Blanchard brings extensive industry experience, having played a pivotal role in establishing Everest Medicines (HKG: 1952) and previously serving as an operating partner at CBC Group, along with an 8-year tenure leading drug development at Eli Lilly & Co. in China.- Flcube.com
