Penn StartUP Fund Backs AI Peptide Startup Peptaris
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Peptaris is one of the first three companies to receive money from the University of Pennsylvania’s StartUP Fund, a $10 million university-backed vehicle that provides early-stage capital to companies founded by Penn faculty. The individual investment amounts were not disclosed. Funding databases list the raise as a Seed round.
Peptaris is based in Philadelphia. It was co-founded by Penn Presidential Associate Professor César de la Fuente and Marcelo Der Torossian Torres, a research assistant professor in the Perelman School of Medicine.
The company is building an AI-powered platform for designing, discovering and optimizing peptide therapeutics. Peptide drugs require careful, systematic tuning of the properties that matter for development, and Peptaris is applying AI to speed up the identification and refinement of promising candidates.
The biotech startup will use the investment to keep developing its platform and to experimentally validate its first therapeutic candidates. That step matters because candidates found computationally need lab evidence before they can move further along a drug development path.
The StartUP Fund was created through Penn’s Office of the Chief Innovation Officer to invest directly in faculty spinouts from across the university’s twelve schools. Its other two inaugural investments went to Vasowatch, which is developing predictive maternal health technology, and OneFiltr, which is working on compact, tunable radio-frequency filters. For Peptaris, the backing comes from a university fund in its home state of Pennsylvania.
CROs, lab suppliers and peptide synthesis providers can get verified founder contacts at newly funded biotech companies each week through B2B Lead Generation For BioTech.
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