Biopharmaceutical company raises $61 million to advance novel small-molecule medicines mined from microbial genomes
Hexagon Bio, a biopharmaceutical company pioneering the discovery of medicines encoded in the global metagenome has raised $61 million to fuel the continued development of its platform to design and develop new therapeutics mined from microbial genomes.
“Microbial genomes are an incredibly rich source of diverse, potent and drug-like compounds that, as a result of millions of years of evolution, provide elegant solutions to human therapeutic targets that have eluded traditional screening approaches. To date, the discovery of these small molecules has been limited to a tiny fraction of the earth’s microbes and hampered by a lack of mechanistic understanding of the intended drug targets,” said Dr Maureen Hillenmeyer, Hexagon Bio’s co-founder and CEO. “Hexagon exists to overcome these challenges and unearth new medicines to combat human disease. We are excited to embark on the next phase of growth to discover and develop unique and potent therapeutic compounds for a broad spectrum of intractable diseases.”
Hexagon’s interdisciplinary platform combines technological advances and proprietary insights across machine learning, genomics, synthetic biology and automation to systematically discover new chemical compounds linked to known protein targets. Proceeds from the financing will enable the company to further expand its genomics database and accelerate its drug discovery efforts with an initial focus on high-value anti-infective and oncology targets.
Hexagon Bio is a biopharmaceutical company pioneering the discovery of medicines encoded in the global metagenome. The company’s highly interdisciplinary platform uses data science, genomics, synthetic biology and automation to mine evolutionarily refined small molecules and their protein targets dirbiopharmaceutical company pioneering the discovery of medicines encoded in the global metagenomectly from microbial genomes and turn these molecules into therapeutics to combat human diseases that have evaded traditional approaches.