Biotech startup Immunai has been on a roll when it comes to funding. The company that set out to create an atlas of the human immune system in 2018 had raised about $80 million by February 2021. On Wednesday, the company announced another significantly larger round: a $215 million series B.
Immunai has been building a massive data set of clinical immunological information. It combines genetic information, along with other data like epigenetic changes or proteomics (the study of proteins), to map out how the immune system functions. Then machine learning is applied to identify what targets might be useful for drugmakers, what drugs might cause toxic reactions, and ultimately predict how a patient might respond to a potential treatment.
Immunai claims this data set, called the Annotated Multi-omic Immune Cell Atlas, AMICA, is the largest in the world.
