In an interview with PharmaShots, William Greene, CEO at Fountain Therapeutics shares his views on the closing of $15M Series A-2 financing & how it supports the drug discovery platform and pipeline

Shots:

• The company closes $15M series A-2 financing bringing its total Series A funding to $26M which was led by Eli Lilly, Alexandria Venture Investments, and R42 Group as new investors & joined by existing investors Khosla Ventures & Nan Fung Life Sciences
• The funding helps to support an expansion of the leadership team, continued R&D activities, and pre-clinical research. The company also focuses on drug development for the treatment of chronic degenerative diseases
• The company will use computer vision, artificial intelligence, and machine learning with deep cell biological insight to identify cellular biologic age and other potential risk factors for diseases

Tuba: Discuss in detail the total funding received. Please name all the investors involved in the funding.

William Greene: We recently announced a $15 million Series A-2 financing which brought our total Series A funding to $26 million. In this round, Eli Lilly and Company, Alexandria Venture Investments, and R42 Group participated as new investors, joining existing investors Khosla Ventures and Nan Fung Life Sciences.

Tuba: What does this funding mean to Fountain Therapeutics?

William Greene: Proceeds of the funding will be used to expand Fountain’s drug discovery and development platform, pipeline, and team. We are encouraged by the support and confidence of our distinguished investors in our platform and approach as well as the ability of our team to build out a pipeline of therapeutics with the potential to extend the healthspan of those living with chronic degenerative diseases associated with aging.

Tuba: How is the company targeting the underlying mechanisms of aging as a way to treat or even prevent diseases of aging?

William Greene: The development of chronic degenerative diseases is the result of a complex interaction of multiple biologic pathways, environment, and time. One fundamental premise is that aging, through loss of cellular resilience, is the major risk factor for many of these diseases. The fountain has developed a discovery and screening platform built upon foundational research showing that the age of a cell can be modulated by factors in the cell’s environment. This platform can identify compounds that restore youthful resilience to cells and tissues through diverse pathways, with the potential to lead to therapies that treat chronic diseases of aging.

In this way, we can take an unbiased approach to drug discovery by focusing on the desired outcome (i.e., improved cellular resilience) versus simply studying what we already know about chronic degenerative diseases and targets.

Tuba: What motivates you to work on age-related diseases?

William Greene: We are motivated to make a real difference for patients with chronic degenerative diseases associated with aging, for which treatment options have not advanced for decades. What treatments are available generally fail to modify the course of the disease. For the first time, there are more people over the age of 65 than under the age of 5. As our (and the world’s) aging population grows, we are committed to helping extend their health span through the discovery and development of novel therapeutics. Using our approach, we believe we have an opportunity to address fundamental shortcomings in the current drug discovery enterprise, such as the lack of novel targets and biomarkers.

Tuba: Discuss the key features of the company’s AI-based drug screening and discovery platform?

William Greene: Fountain’s drug discovery platform enables the screening of thousands of drug compounds, to identify drug candidates that specifically reverse the biological age of cells. We can also use the platform to discover new targets and biomarkers of disease.

Our approach is based on the idea that primary cells maintain a “memory” of the age of their donor that can be measured. We leverage our platform, calibrated with a deep and rich database of highly annotated and curated data, to measure cellular age with extreme accuracy. This platform is driven by the very latest developments in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and computer vision, along with the deep expertise of our team in the biology of aging.

We combine this platform with proprietary in vivo cell systems that model complex features of whole-body aging to identify and quantify new aging-related phenotypes and potential novel disease-modifying therapeutics.

Tuba: Are you looking for more investors? If yes, how one can contact you?

William Greene: We are always open to exploring partnering opportunities and meeting with interested investors. Any inquiries and questions you may have about Fountain including our technology and business objectives, we are here to answer: info@fountaintx.com.

Tuba: Please discuss the vision and mission of the company with our readers?

William Greene: We envision a world in which people can live healthier longer. Our mission is to develop treatments to extend the healthspan of people living with chronic degenerative diseases.

Source: Canva

About Author:

William Greene is the CEO of Fountain Therapeutics. Dr. Greene has over 20 years of industry experience as a physician, researcher, entrepreneur, venture investor, and operating executive He received a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University and holds a medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He completed his scientific and medical training at Massachusetts General Hospital, UCSF, and Yale.

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