China's Nutshell Therapeutics raises $20m

Source Code Capital and Kunlun Capital also participated in the round. Existing investors including Northern Light Venture Capital and Baidu Ventures re-upped. The fresh capital will support development of specialized protein-focused drugs called allosteric drugs, according to a statement.

Nutshell estimates that 85% of the difficult-to-drug targets requires the introduction of new technologies such as allosteric technology. Allosteric drugs can be combined with orthomorphic drugs to delay the occurrence of drug-resistant mutations in diseases such as tumors.

Global companies in this space include Nasdaq-listed Relay Therapeutics and HotSpot Therapeutics, which has received $65 million in Series B funding.

Before 2010, most allosteric molecules were accidentally discovered through high-throughput screening experiments. Nutshell has developed an allosteric data center that can lead to rational discovery methods. Many multinational pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies and research institutions have become early adopters, according to the company.

Nutshell has used the database to build an allosteric drug R&D platform, combining artificial intelligence the biochemistry. The platform covers the complete allosteric drug discovery and optimization process.

The company has several product pipelines. Its pre-Series A was led by Northern Light Venture Capital and Baidu Ventures.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Early-stage
• Healthcare
• Technology
• China
• Pharmaceuticals
• Baidu
• Northern Light Venture Capital
• Matrix Partners
• Source Code Capital