Pragma Bio builds a platform to discover therapeutic molecules from the human microbiome, focusing initially on augmenting immunotherapy in oncology. The company is creating a large biological map linking microbes, genes, proteins and immune-cell data and applies statistical models and machine learning to identify candidate molecules. Its “self-read” system converts DNA sequence to expression and produces small amounts of desired molecules in days, avoiding traditional culturing and accelerating lead generation. Pragma partners with pharmaceutical companies for synthesis and in vivo testing because scaling production of novel molecules is expensive and the company has limited capital to advance many leads at once. The company rebranded from VastBiome (which raised a $4.5M seed in 2020) and announced a new $10M financing to fund scaling, production and the next phase of a 10-year plan. Company leadership said the $10M is not the end of this fundraise.

Total raised

$10M

Funding rounds

1

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Mar 2023