Latest news with #Centivax
Business Wire
12-06-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
Parallel Bio Secures $21 Million in Series A to Advance Human-First Drug Discovery
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Parallel Bio, a biotech company pioneering human-first drug discovery, today announced it has raised $21 million Series A funding, led by AIX Ventures. The round attracted prominent leaders in AI and biotech, including new investors Amplo and Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce, and existing investors Metaplanet, Humba Ventures, Atypical Ventures, Undeterred Capital, and Jeff Dean. 'Parallel Bio is redefining drug development by turning the conventional model upside down—transforming today's 95% failure rate into a pathway for 95% success." Share The company also revealed that 8 pharmaceutical partners, including three Fortune 500 companies, are testing more than 50 drugs and immunotherapies using its organoid-based immune system platform—including Centivax, which completed the first preclinical testing on the platform for its universal flu vaccine candidate. 'With these milestones, we are closer to making human-first drug discovery the new industry standard,' said Robert DiFazio, CEO and co-founder at Parallel Bio. 'For too long, the reliance on lab mice to model human biology has come at a high cost: 95% of drugs fail in human trials even after succeeding in animal studies. We're turning that on its head by using organoids and AI to discover drugs in true-to-life human models from the start.' Parallel Bio will use the new capital to scale the AI and automation capabilities of its organoid-based immune system platform, expand its team of scientists and engineers, and support growing pharmaceutical partnerships. To date, Parallel Bio has raised a total of nearly $30 million, including this Series A and previous seed rounds. Parallel Bio's platform combines lymph-node organoids with AI and robotics to replicate the human immune system at scale across diverse populations. Organoids are 3D, self-assembling models of human biology. These miniature organs mimic an organ's structure and function and the body's response to disease or treatment, as if the organoids were individual patients. AIX Ventures partner Krish Ramadurai, who joined the company's board of directors as part of the round, commented: 'Parallel Bio is redefining drug development by turning the conventional model upside down—transforming today's 95% failure rate into a pathway for 95% success. Their groundbreaking human-first platform unlocks biological insights previously impossible to capture, accelerating the development of effective treatments that reach patients faster while generating de novo biological data to power the next generation of AI-driven therapeutics. We're thrilled to partner with the Parallel Bio team in setting a new gold standard for the future of medicine.' Since launching Clinical Trial in a Dish last year, Parallel Bio has seen growing demand from pharmaceutical companies. This first commercial application accurately predicts the safest and most effective drug candidates for human trials. 'Starting with human models enables new drugs to reach the market at a pace never possible before,' said Juliana Hilliard, Parallel Bio co-founder and chief scientific officer. 'We aim to slash $2 billion and 9 years from each drug candidate in development by predicting success at the earliest stages of discovery.' Centivax Validates Broad Immune Response in Organoid Trial Parallel Bio partnered with Centivax, a universal immunity biotechnology company, to generate human-first data to validate Centivax's first program: a universal flu vaccine called Centi-Flu that is now in manufacturing for human clinical trials, with the first patient expected to be dosed early next year. 'Parallel Bio enables us to derisk the single biggest source of failure in vaccine development: making sure the vaccines work in humans before the human trials have even begun,' said Jacob Glanville, president and CEO at Centivax. 'Even though we have validated our pan-influenza responses in mice, rats, pigs, and ferrets, ultimately we are making a universal vaccine for humans. Parallel Bio's platform is transformative by allowing us to directly validate our results in immune organoids derived from adult humans.' The organoid study revealed the power of the Centi-Flu technology: by effectively targeting common features of the virus shared by many different influenza strains, Centi-Flu even produces strong immune responses against strains not included in the vaccine. Human immune organoids were 'vaccinated' with Centi-Flu, leading to the production of B cells capable of reacting to a wide variety of flu strains. The immune organoids were derived from patients with prior flu exposure, proving that Centi-Flu could trigger broad humoral responses in flu-exposed individuals. The organoid model also showed activation of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, which are important for fighting infections, suggesting that Centi-Flu helps stimulate both antibody production and T cell immunity. This combination is particularly valuable for protecting against severe flu, including hospitalization and death. About Parallel Bio Parallel Bio is pioneering human-first drug discovery by combining organoids and AI to create true-to-life models of human biology. The company developed the first platform that replicates the human immune system across diverse populations, predicting drug success and identifying disease targets with accuracy and speed far beyond the limits of traditional animal models. Pharmaceutical partners, including three Fortune 500 companies, are using its Clinical Trial in a Dish to test the safety and efficacy of immunotherapies. Based in Cambridge, Mass., Parallel Bio was founded in 2021 by two scientists behind the world's first scalable human immune organoid.
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Parallel Bio Secures $21 Million in Series A to Advance Human-First Drug Discovery
Signs on Eight Pharmaceutical Partners and Completes First Preclinical Study from Immune Organoid Platform with Centivax CAMBRIDGE, Mass., June 12, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Parallel Bio, a biotech company pioneering human-first drug discovery, today announced it has raised $21 million Series A funding, led by AIX Ventures. The round attracted prominent leaders in AI and biotech, including new investors Amplo and Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce, and existing investors Metaplanet, Humba Ventures, Atypical Ventures, Undeterred Capital, and Jeff Dean. The company also revealed that 8 pharmaceutical partners, including three Fortune 500 companies, are testing more than 50 drugs and immunotherapies using its organoid-based immune system platform—including Centivax, which completed the first preclinical testing on the platform for its universal flu vaccine candidate. "With these milestones, we are closer to making human-first drug discovery the new industry standard," said Robert DiFazio, CEO and co-founder at Parallel Bio. "For too long, the reliance on lab mice to model human biology has come at a high cost: 95% of drugs fail in human trials even after succeeding in animal studies. We're turning that on its head by using organoids and AI to discover drugs in true-to-life human models from the start." Parallel Bio will use the new capital to scale the AI and automation capabilities of its organoid-based immune system platform, expand its team of scientists and engineers, and support growing pharmaceutical partnerships. To date, Parallel Bio has raised a total of nearly $30 million, including this Series A and previous seed rounds. Parallel Bio's platform combines lymph-node organoids with AI and robotics to replicate the human immune system at scale across diverse populations. Organoids are 3D, self-assembling models of human biology. These miniature organs mimic an organ's structure and function and the body's response to disease or treatment, as if the organoids were individual patients. AIX Ventures partner Krish Ramadurai, who joined the company's board of directors as part of the round, commented: "Parallel Bio is redefining drug development by turning the conventional model upside down—transforming today's 95% failure rate into a pathway for 95% success. Their groundbreaking human-first platform unlocks biological insights previously impossible to capture, accelerating the development of effective treatments that reach patients faster while generating de novo biological data to power the next generation of AI-driven therapeutics. We're thrilled to partner with the Parallel Bio team in setting a new gold standard for the future of medicine." Since launching Clinical Trial in a Dish last year, Parallel Bio has seen growing demand from pharmaceutical companies. This first commercial application accurately predicts the safest and most effective drug candidates for human trials. "Starting with human models enables new drugs to reach the market at a pace never possible before," said Juliana Hilliard, Parallel Bio co-founder and chief scientific officer. "We aim to slash $2 billion and 9 years from each drug candidate in development by predicting success at the earliest stages of discovery." Centivax Validates Broad Immune Response in Organoid Trial Parallel Bio partnered with Centivax, a universal immunity biotechnology company, to generate human-first data to validate Centivax's first program: a universal flu vaccine called Centi-Flu that is now in manufacturing for human clinical trials, with the first patient expected to be dosed early next year. "Parallel Bio enables us to derisk the single biggest source of failure in vaccine development: making sure the vaccines work in humans before the human trials have even begun," said Jacob Glanville, president and CEO at Centivax. "Even though we have validated our pan-influenza responses in mice, rats, pigs, and ferrets, ultimately we are making a universal vaccine for humans. Parallel Bio's platform is transformative by allowing us to directly validate our results in immune organoids derived from adult humans." The organoid study revealed the power of the Centi-Flu technology: by effectively targeting common features of the virus shared by many different influenza strains, Centi-Flu even produces strong immune responses against strains not included in the vaccine. Human immune organoids were "vaccinated" with Centi-Flu, leading to the production of B cells capable of reacting to a wide variety of flu strains. The immune organoids were derived from patients with prior flu exposure, proving that Centi-Flu could trigger broad humoral responses in flu-exposed individuals. The organoid model also showed activation of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, which are important for fighting infections, suggesting that Centi-Flu helps stimulate both antibody production and T cell immunity. This combination is particularly valuable for protecting against severe flu, including hospitalization and death. About Parallel Bio Parallel Bio is pioneering human-first drug discovery by combining organoids and AI to create true-to-life models of human biology. The company developed the first platform that replicates the human immune system across diverse populations, predicting drug success and identifying disease targets with accuracy and speed far beyond the limits of traditional animal models. Pharmaceutical partners, including three Fortune 500 companies, are using its Clinical Trial in a Dish to test the safety and efficacy of immunotherapies. Based in Cambridge, Mass., Parallel Bio was founded in 2021 by two scientists behind the world's first scalable human immune organoid. View source version on Contacts Media contactMatt Hickspress@ Business contactRobert DiFaziobd@
7NEWS
11-05-2025
- Health
- 7NEWS
Tim injected himself with snake venom hundreds of times. Now, his blood could save lives
Immunologist Jacob Glanville came across media reports in 2017 of a man who had injected himself hundreds of times with the venom of some of the world's deadliest snakes, including cobras, mambas, and rattlesnakes — and allowed himself to be bitten. 'The news articles were kind of flashy. 'Crazy guy gets bit by snakes',' Glanville said. 'But I looked, and I was like there's a diamond in the rough here.' Glanville's diamond was Tim Friede, a self-taught snake expert based in California who exposed himself to the venom of snakes over the course of nearly 18 years, effectively gaining immunity to several neurotoxins. 'We had this conversation. And I said, I know it's awkward, but I'm really interested in looking at some of your blood,' Glanville recalled. 'He said 'finally, I've been waiting for this call'.' The pair agreed to work together, and Friede donated a 40-milliliter blood sample to Glanville and his colleagues. Eight years later, Glanville and Peter Kwong, Richard J. Stock Professor of medical sciences at Columbia University's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, have published details of an antivenom that can protect against bites from 19 species of venomous snake — at least in mice — based on antibodies in Friede's blood and a venom-blocking drug. 'Tim, to my knowledge, he has an unparalleled history. It was different, very diverse species from every continent that has snakes, and ... he kept rotating between (the snake venoms) over a 17-year, nine-month history, and he took meticulous records the entire time,' Glanville said. 'However, we strongly discourage anyone from trying to do what Tim did,' Glanville added. 'Snake venom is dangerous.' Friede gave up immunising himself with snake venom in 2018 after some close calls, and he is now employed by Glanville's biotechnology company Centivax, Glanville said. Glanville is CEO and chairman of Centivax. The research was published Friday in the scientific journal Cell. CNN contacted Friede, but he did not respond to an interview request. The snakebite problem If you're unlucky enough to have a venomous snake sink its fangs into you, your best hope is an antivenom, which for the most part has been made in the same way since Victorian times. Traditionally, the process involves milking snake venom by hand and injecting it into horses or other animals in small doses to evoke an immune response. The animal's blood is drawn and purified to obtain antibodies that act against the venom. Producing antivenom in this way can get messy, not to mention dangerous. The process is prone to errors and laborious, and the finished serum can result in serious side effects. Experts have long called for better ways to treat snakebites, which kill some 200 people a day, mainly in the developing world, and leave 400,000 people a year with disabilities. The World Health Organization added snakebite to its list of neglected tropical diseases in 2017. Glanville, who grew up in rural Guatemala, said he had long been aware of the health problems posed by snakebites and immediately recognised that Friede's experience presented a unique opportunity. Exposing himself to the venom of snakes for nearly two decades, by injecting venom and allowing himself to be bitten, Friede had generated antibodies that were effective against several snake neurotoxins at once. 'Revolutionary' potential The researchers isolated antibodies from Friede's blood that reacted with neurotoxins found within the 19 snake species tested in the study, which included coral snakes, mambas, cobras, taipans, kraits and others. These antibodies were then tested one by one in mice poisoned by venom from each of the 19 species, allowing scientists to understand systematically the minimum number of components that would neutralise all the venoms. The drug cocktail the team created ultimately included three things: two antibodies isolated from Friede and the small-molecule drug varespladib, which inhibits an enzyme that is present in 95% of all snakebites. The drug is currently in human clinical trials as a standalone treatment. The first antibody, known as LNX-D09, protected mice from a lethal dose of whole venom from six of the snake species. The addition of varespladib granted protection against an additional three species. Finally, researchers added a second antibody isolated from Friede's blood, called SNX-B03, which extended protection across 19 species. The antivenom offered the mice 100% protection against the venom for 13 species and partial protection (20% to 40%) for the remaining six, the researchers noted in the study. Steven Hall, a snakebite pharmacologist at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom, called it a 'very clever and creative way' to develop an antivenom. Hall wasn't involved in the research. And while the cocktail has not been tested in humans, should it be approved for clinical use, Hall said the human origin of the antibodies would likely mean fewer side effects than antivenoms made the traditional way using horses or other animals, which can often result in allergic reactions. 'It's impressive for the fact that this is done with one or two antibodies, plus a small-molecule drug, and that increases the number of species, versus a regular antidote. And I think it does a good job of highlighting the potential utility of combining a small-molecule drug with an antibody,' Hall added. 'If it makes it into clinic, makes it into people in the long run, it would be revolutionary. It actually would completely change the field in terms of snakebite (treatment),' he said. Columbia's Kwong said that the published research focused on a class of snakes known as elapids. It did not include viperids, the other major group of venomous snakes that includes rattlesnakes, saw-scaled vipers and additional species. However, the team is investigating whether additional antibodies identified in Friede's blood or other agents might offer protection against this viperid family of snakes. 'The final contemplated product would be a single, pan-antivenom cocktail or we potentially would make two: one that is for the elapids and another that is for the viperids because some areas of the world only have one or the other,' Kwong said. The team also wants to start field research in Australia, where there are only elapid snakes, allowing vets to use the antivenom on dogs bitten by snakes.
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
A self-taught snake expert's 200 snake bites may lead to a universal ‘cure' for snake venom
Sure, troops getting bitten and envenomated by poisonous snakes isn't high on the list of things the Department of Defense needs to worry about. It's probably not even in the top 100, but for the guy in the unit who was bitten by a Saw-Scaled Viper while out on patrol. That particular viper is active at night, very common in Afghanistan, and is responsible for the most deaths by snake bite. It would take about 15 minutes to become one of the biggest issues a troop has out in the field. But to combat a venomous snake bite, you need to get the specific snake's antivenin, if one is available. Getting a specific kind of snake antivenin anywhere in Afghanistan was a logistical nightmare, not to mention that the U.S. military had to acquire the treatment from the government of Iran – who has not traditionally been our best friend. It would be so much easier if your medic or doc just happened to have that kind of treatment readily available, but since there are more than 100 different kinds of snake antivenins available, the chances aren't great. In America's next war, however, things might be different. A former truck driver from California has been on a nearly 20-year journey of injecting himself with snake venom and his effort may have led to a universal cure for venomous snakebites. Tim Friede is a self-taught herpetologist, a scientist from an old breed. He's like Evan O'Neill Kane, who removed his own appendix to prove it could be done using local anaesthetic, or Dr. Barry Marshall, who ate a dish of H. pylori bacteria to prove it caused ulcers. He's a researcher at Centivax, a biotech firm with the mission of creating universal vaccines and broad spectrum anti-infectives. While the company is working with the Department of Defense to create new antibiotics and a universal vaccine for influenza, Friede is on a whole different project. Friede's project is a broad-spectrum anti-venom, but his methods are pretty unusual. He started out by injecting himself with snake venom to build up an immunity, in case he was bitten while handling snakes at work. When he received two cobra bites in a row that left him in a coma, he decided to take a different approach. He has since taken more than 200 bites and more than 700 injections of venom, many from the world's deadliest snakes with venom that can kill a human very quickly – unless that human is Tim Friede. The way antivenin (or anti-venom) serums are created is by injecting small amounts of the poison into animals like horses or lambs. When the animals' immune systems start producing antibodies to fight the intruder, the antibodies are harvested and made into life-saving treatments. The only problem is, historically, you need to know what bit you. The snake anti-venom serum has to be matched to the snake. Centivax, with its unique mission, started looking to create something more universal. That's where Friede came in. If the cobra that put Friede in a coma were to bite him today, the only effect it would have is a slightly annoyed Tim Friede. He's not only immune to cobras, he's been bitten by mambas, kraits and even taipans, the world's most toxic snake. 'It just became a lifestyle and I just kept pushing and pushing and pushing as hard as I could push,' Friede told the BBC. '… for the people who are 8,000 miles away from me who die from snakebite.' Centivax began looking for antibodies from 19 elapids, snakes whose venom is a potent neurotoxin in Friede's blood. The ones they chose are identified by the World Health Organization as among the world's deadliest. They found them. A study published in the medical journal 'Cell' revealed two 'broadly neutralizing antibodies' that protected lab mice from fatal doses from 13 of 19 venomous snake species. That kind of protection means it can cover venomous bites from some snakes that don't currently have an antivenin and may even lead to a treatment for all elapid bites. There are currently a dozen different classes of toxins within snake venoms, and because of Tim Friede's 20-year mission, there may soon be a 'cure' for all of them within the next 20 years. 'I'm doing something good for humanity and that was very important to me,' he said. 'I'm proud of it. It's pretty cool.'
Hindustan Times
08-05-2025
- Health
- Hindustan Times
Tim Friede: Man bitten by snakes hundreds of times helps create broad antivenom
It's not often that a major scientific paper leads one to a story like this. It was while reading a new Cell study on snake venom antibodies that the name of a 'hyperimmune donor' in the acknowledgments caught my eye. Behind that clinical language lies the story of Tim Friede, a self-taught snake enthusiast from Wisconsin whose obsession might one day unlock a medical innovation for snakebite victims across India and the world. Snakebites kill up to 140,000 people each year, and among countries, India bears the highest toll. Treatment has changed little since the 1890s, when Albert Calmette first used horse serum to neutralise cobra venom in colonial India. Antivenoms today are still based on animal-derived polyclonal antibodies, which often cause allergic reactions, don't work against all species, require cold-chain storage, and depend on correct species identification. For patients in remote villages who travel hours to reach a hospital, these limitations can be fatal. This is where our hyperimmune donor comes in. Friede, a former truck mechanic with no formal scientific training, had been fascinated by snakes since childhood. In 2001, he decided to take that interest to the extreme. After methodically working up to it, he let himself be bitten by a venomous snake for the first time. 'They want to kill me,' he told NPR. 'And I want to survive.' Friede's first two cobra bites landed him in a coma for four days. Undeterred, he went on to receive 202 snakebites from some of the world's deadliest species and injected himself with 654 additional doses of venom. Over time, his blood became an archive of immune responses to snake-derived neurotoxins from around the world. That's where Jacob Glanville, a computational immunologist and CEO of the biotech firm Centivax, enters the story. Glanville had been looking for a universal target across multiple snake species. Instead of relying on animals like horses, he wanted to find potent human antibodies that could be mass-produced. When he heard about Friede, he knew he had found an unprecedented immune system. (The researchers are quick to emphasise that no one should follow Friede's path. He stopped self-immunising in 2018). In the Cell study, Glanville's team isolated two extraordinarily broad and potent antibodies from Friede's blood. These antibodies targeted conserved regions in long- and short-chain neurotoxins, which are proteins shared across dozens of deadly snakes. Combined with a small molecule called varespladib, which inhibits a third venom component, they created a three-part cocktail. It protected mice from lethal doses of venom from 13 snake species and extended survival in six more. Among the snakes tested were many that plague the Indian subcontinent, including the common krait and Indian cobra. Anirban Mahapatra is a scientist and author, most recently of the popular science book 'When the Drugs Don't Work: The Hidden Pandemic That Could End Medicine'. The views expressed are personal.
