The trajectory of our lives depends rather heavily upon how we navigate through certain problems. With our answers to these problems acting as a foundation for that next step, the approach we pick during the early stage ends up enjoying at least some influence across various stages in our lives. Now, as we know, such a setup brings a lot of room for errors, therefore prompting humans to seek external help and effectively protect their interests. If we stick to the point of external help for a second, we’ll notice this aid has arrived in some diverse forms over the years, and yet all that diversity fails to make any noise in front of technology. You see, what technology did wasn’t just about compiling the contrasting ideas into one giant force, but it also made sure that each idea was clocking its optimal potential. By doing so, the creation was able to raise both our ceiling and our floor, thus paving the way for a smarter society. In fact, even after we reach the said milestone, this move will continue to deliver benefits in various disguises, with the most recent one coming on the back of a healthcare funding.
ArrePath, an anti-infective drug discovery startup, has officially secured over $20 million in seed funding. Led by Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund, Insight Partners, and Innospark Ventures, the round saw further participation coming from the likes of Viva BioInnovator, Arimed Capital, PTX Capital, and Nor’easter Ventures. Even though it is a relatively new player, the startup has already gained some serious traction due to its unique dual mechanism approach around killing bacteria. A Princeton University’s spinout at the core, ArrePath enlists Artificial Intelligence, machine learning and advanced imaging technologies to identify bacteria’s behavior when it’s exposed to a set of new molecules. Once the relevant information has been collected, the company predicates the entire developmental process on it and delivers whole new classes of anti-effective drugs. As discovering fresh antibiotic compounds is integral to the way ArrePath goes about everything, it plans on using the cash injection to scale up lead compounds and overall discovery efforts. Apart from it, the company hopes to improve its imaging capabilities, while also roping in new applications for machine learning.
“This financing is a strong vote of confidence, by a global investment syndicate, in our platform and its enormous potential in anti-infective drug discovery. The funding will enable the advancement of our initial leads and expansion of our discovery efforts, as well as the enhancement of our imaging platform and the application of machine learning in the discovery of new drugs to address critical global health challenges,” said Lloyd Payne, CEO of ArrePath.
Notably enough, all ArrePath’s drugs are rooted in a research done by Zemer Gitai, who happens to be company’s founder as well. A biology professor at Princeton University, Gitai’s research was a breakthrough because it provides an encompassing anti-ineffective activity against Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria. The activity doesn’t trigger any drug resistance either, hence promising to significantly upgrade pharmaceuticals’ prospects over time.
