Octant combines synthetic biology, high-throughput multiplexed assays, synthetic chemistry, and computation to build a platform for engineering and interrogating drugs, proteins, and cellular pathways at scale. The platform generates proprietary datasets that map relationships among drug candidates, genetics, biochemical mechanisms, and disease phenotypes to guide discovery of novel mechanisms of action. Octant will use Series B proceeds to expand platform capabilities and its pipeline, advance its proprietary drug discovery technology, and generate extensive datasets. The company plans to develop multiple additional therapeutic programs, including small molecule chaperone therapies for rare genetic diseases. Octant also announced a Deep Mutational Scanning collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb to apply its DMS technologies to inflammation-related pathways. Senior hires and advisory appointments, including Rick Artis as Chief Scientific Officer and Feng Zhang to the Scientific Advisory Board, accompany the company’s growth. To date, Octant has raised $115 million in funding. Octant develops a polypharmacology discovery platform that uses synthetic biology, genome engineering, next-generation sequencing, functional genomics and computation to map activity across thousands of receptor pathways in human cells. The platform focuses initially on G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) and their downstream signaling to engineer multi-target drug leads for complex diseases such as metabolic and neurological disorders. Octant uses genetic barcodes to reveal chemical–receptor activity in pooled assays, increasing throughput and reducing costs versus serial discovery approaches. The company pursues internal development programs and strategic partnerships with pharmaceutical firms to advance candidates that are difficult to address with single-target approaches. Octant has also open-sourced part of its platform under the Open COVID Pledge and shared repurposing efforts and a SwabSeq protocol for the COVID-19 pandemic. The company is headquartered in Emeryville, Calif.

Total raised

$110M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Series B

Latest activity

Apr 2022