Peptone closes $2.5 million seed round led by Hoxton Ventures
Peptone raised $2.5 million from Hoxton Ventures, dRX Capital, and Founders Factory to develop its protein-engineering system, grow its team, and build computing capacity in Iceland
Peptone raised a $2.5 million seed round led by Hoxton Ventures, with participation from dRX Capital, a venture arm of Novartis, and Founders Factory.
The funding supported development of Peptone’s Protein Engineering Operating System, a computing system that combines molecular physics and neural networks to analyze protein behavior.
Building the team and computing capacity
Peptone planned to use part of the investment to grow its seven-person team to approximately 15 people. The company also planned to build a supercomputing hub in Iceland.
Understanding proteins is central to many areas of medicine. Vaccine research into COVID-19 focused heavily on the virus’s spike protein, antibodies are themselves proteins, and the accumulation of certain proteins in brain cells is associated with neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
Peptone brings together advanced biophysics, atomic-level experiments, supercomputing, and machine learning to study proteins that do not adopt a single fixed structure. By improving the description of these intrinsically disordered proteins, the company aims to open new paths toward therapeutics for targets that conventional methods have struggled to address.