NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Nimbus Discovery today announced an extension of its seed round of funding, which will be used to advance drug programs based on its in silco discovery platform.
The funding comes from Bill Gates and Richard Freisner, co-founder of chemical simulation software firm Schrödinger and a professor of chemistry at Columbia University. Atlas Venture, the founding investor in Nimbus, also was a participant.
Nimbus did not disclose the amount of the investment.
The funds will be used to advance the company's lead programs in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, inflammatory disorders, and metabolic disease, Nimbus said. It is targeting proteins crucial in disease progression, including IRAK4 and ACC.
Nimbus said that its pipeline stems from a partnership forged in 2010 with Schrödinger, which provided Nimbus access to its WaterMap software and related technologies, as well as rights to key targets.
The WaterMap software calculates the locations and thermodynamic properties of water molecules that solvate the binding sites of a protein, allowing for the calculation of relative binding affinities of congeneric compounds that bind to the protein.
Nimbus, headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., also has exclusive use of customized software packages developed by Schrödinger for the targets, access to computational chemists at Schrödinger, and unlimited use of cloud computing resources.
Schrödinger, in return, has a material stake in Nimbus and will receive milestone payments.