Copyright The Boston Globe
Boston-based biotech firm Manifold Bio announced on Monday that it will partner with Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche to develop a drug for neurological disease using technology driven by artificial intelligence. Manifold Bio launched was co-founded by geneticist and serial-entrepreneur George Church and his former graduate students, Gleb Kuznetsov and Pierce Ogden, now chief executive and chief scientific officer of the company. Church is known for founding more than 20 biotech companies, including gene-editing company Colossal Biosciences in 2021, a company working to de-extinct animals such as the woolly mammoth, the dodo bird, and the dire wolf. Under the agreement announced Monday, Roche is set to give Manifold $55 million up front, with potential revenue of up to $2 billion from research milestones and — if a drug is created — tiered royalties. In return, Roche gets the rights to use Manifold’s technology for specific programs, while Manifold retains the right to apply the technology to target other areas of the brain and body. “We are excited about our partnership with Manifold to identify the next generation of highly specific [brain-blood-barrier] shuttles,” Boris Zaïtra, head of corporate business development at Roche said, in a statement. “To tackle some of the most important neurological and neurodegenerative diseases.” Advertisement Manifold is developing a new approach to deliver drugs to the brain, overcoming the “blood-brain barrier,” a tightly locked layer of cells that protect the brain from harmful substances and germs. The new approach relies on a combination of AI and a system which allows Manifold to test hundreds of thousands of drug candidates in a single animal simultaneously. Testing like this, in a way that sees how the body reacts to the drug, differs from traditional approaches that test large number of drug candidates in a petri dish. “If all goes well,” said Kuznetsov, “Diseases of the brain, like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s that affect many folks are going to be treatable in different ways using the kind of technologies we’re building here.” Launched in 2020, Manifold has grown to 46 people today, and is looking to use the $55 million to expand its operations and workforce. It is headquartered in the Pagliuca Harvard Life Lab in Allston. Advertisement “Manifold is delighted to have the opportunity to collaborate with Roche’s team of talented research and translational neuroscientists,” said the company’s chair, Steven Holtzman, in a statement. “This alliance provides Manifold with a foundational partnership that contains key structural elements that will enable [Manifold] to grow as an independent biopharmaceutical company.” Yogev Toby can be reached at yogev.toby@globe.com.
