CelerisTx

[Name]

[Elevator Pitch]

[The Story]

CelerisTx

“We are a deep-learning company that develops innovative computer-based methods to degrade undruggable targets. Our cloud platform, Celeris One, helps pharmaceutical and biotech companies to develop better drugs faster.”

CelerisTx, a deep-learning company that leads the field in AI degrader development and discovery, was set up in 2020 by friends Christopher Trummer and Jakob Hohenburger, and incorporated in 2021. Until recently, drugs were developed to suppress disease symptoms by inhibiting the functions of the pathogenic proteins (targets) that cause the illness. However, 80 percent of targets cannot be inhibited by modern medication. These “undruggable” targets are often associated with central nervous system diseases such as Alzheimers and many types of cancer, as well as virus-related illnesses. Yet through a process called targeted protein degradation, there is an opportunity to degrade these proteins and thereby work towards treating the disease. With their combined experience across the pharmaceutical, bioinformatics and IT industries, Christopher and Jakob saw that they could make an impact by using deep learning to identify and degrade the undruggable proteins.

The Celeris One platform uses machine learning to accelerate the identification of the targets, which are then validated by a fully automated lab, enabling biotech and pharmaceutical companies to discover and develop better drugs faster. Since founding the company, the team has grown to fifteen people, and during the pre-seed round they secured €1.6 million ($1.9 million).

[Funding History] [Milestones]

Bootstrap Pre-Seed Seed

External Grants

From inception through their pre-seed phase, CelerisTx secured over €1 million ($1.2 million) in funding from three worldclass VCs, as well as €600,000 ($718,000) in non-dilutive grants. It has secured an additional €2 million ($2.4 million) in its first seed round and will raise €3–5 million more in a second round. Starting our first collaborations with Big Pharma.

Securing €1 million in funding from world-class VCs, and €600,000 in non-dilutive grants.

Building a brilliant team with a united motivation to make an impact through our work.

Attracting world-leading experts to our board of directors and team of scientific advisors.