Biotech Startup Automera Raises $16 Million in Seed Funding

Automera, a new Singapore-based biotechnology company, has raised $16 million in Series A funding led by Accelerator Life Science Partners (ALSP) and ClavystBio.

According to a statement issued by Automera on Sept 27, the funding also included participation from Singapore-based global investor EDBI, Xora Innovation, and other unnamed investors. Loong Wang from Automera, Dr. Alice Chen and Thong Q. Le from ALSP, and Dr. Wen Qi Ho from ClavystBio have joined the Board of Directors.

"Automera was founded on the premise that improving health outcomes for people with serious diseases requires new technologies that make it easier, faster, and less expensive to develop safe and effective medicines," said Loong Wang, co-founder and CEO of Automera.

He believes that the firm’s autophagy-targeting chimera small molecules (AUTAC) platform is one such technology, with broad potential across multiple disease indications that are difficult to treat with current therapeutic approaches.

“We greatly value the business and financial support that ALSP provides and are proud that leading healthcare investors are participating in Automera’s Series A financing,

“With these resources, Automera is well positioned to deploy our AUTAC platform toward the development of potentially transformative therapies,” he added.

Automera is a new biotechnology company that focuses on the development of AUTACs. The company was established by co-founders Associate Professor Michael Lazarou, Loong Wang, and Taiyang Zhang at Talo Labs Pte Ltd. It’s AUTAC platform is a next-generation approach to realizing the potential of targeted protein degradation (TPD) as a therapeutic modality.

TPD, an emerging field of novel therapeutics, catalyzes the degradation of disease-related proteins while retaining the benefits of small molecules.

The AUTAC platform from Automera is intended to generate novel therapies that degrade not only disease-related proteins, but also protein aggregates, organelles, and pathogens.

Automera believes that AUTACs have the potential to be more flexible than existing approaches to protein degradation, such as proteolysis-targeting chimaeras (PROTACs).

"ALSP has long been interested in helping to drive biopharma innovation emerging in Singapore," said Alice Chen, Executive Vice President of ALSP and Automera board member.

Automera, as the firm's first investment in Singapore, she says, exemplifies the region's innovative scientific and translational research.