A-Alpha Bio, a Seattle-based company, has received $14.5 million in funding from the Department of Defense to expand a project with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in response to biological threats. The project aims to preemptively generate data and train computational models in order to quickly respond to future diseases or biothreats. The technology used by A-Alpha Bio utilizes machine learning to discover new antibodies that fight diseases by identifying protein interactions. The project initially focused on coronaviruses and expanded to other specific pathogen families, resulting in the measurement of interactions between nearly 10 million antibody-antigen combinations across three pathogen families. This has led to improvements in machine learning models.
A-Alpha Bio’s AlphaSeq platform has been instrumental in measuring antibody-antigen interactions and training predictive machine learning models using high-throughput data. The company received $1 million from LLNL in 2022 and $2.4 million from the DOD last year for the project, both of which are part of the DOD Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Defense’s GUIDE program. The collaboration between A-Alpha Bio and LLNL has been successful in training machine learning models with antibody-antigen binding data, leading to the expansion of their partnership. A-Alpha Bio’s chief technical officer, Randolph Lopez, expressed excitement about the progress made in the collaboration.
A-Alpha Bio was founded in 2017 and has raised a total of $65.5 million, including the recent DOD funding, approximately $46 million from investors, and grant dollars. The startup’s technology offers a systematic approach to discovering new antibodies using machine learning tools powered by pools of single-celled yeast engineered to express various proteins or protein fragments. These yeast cells fuse when two proteins interact, allowing the identification of interacting proteins through experimental and computational methods. A-Alpha Bio has partnerships with drug companies such as Bristol Myers Squibb and Gilead Sciences, highlighting the potential impact of its technology in the pharmaceutical industry.
The collaboration between A-Alpha Bio and LLNL aims to leverage A-Alpha Bio’s technology and the expertise of LLNL to proactively prepare for future biological threats. The project began as a response to the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and has since expanded to include other specific pathogen families of concern. By measuring interactions between antibodies and antigens across multiple pathogen families, A-Alpha Bio’s technology has been instrumental in training machine learning models to predict antibody-antigen binding interactions. The partnership with LLNL and the funding from the DOD will support ongoing efforts to improve the company’s machine learning models and prepare for future biothreats.
Overall, the collaboration between A-Alpha Bio, LLNL, and the DOD showcases the potential of machine learning and high-throughput data in preemptively preparing for future biological threats. The funding from the DOD, along with previous investments from investors and grant dollars, will support A-Alpha Bio’s efforts to expand its technology and continue its partnerships with drug companies. By leveraging innovative technology and strategic partnerships, A-Alpha Bio is paving the way for advancements in the discovery and development of new antibodies to combat diseases and biothreats.
