The first thing Promise Bio CEO Ronel Veksler wants you to know about the biotech company he co-founded is that it’s not another AI drug discovery company. Instead, he’s looking to bring precision medicine to autoimmune diseases.
Tel Aviv-based Promise Bio has developed a cloud-based AI platform that can spot different Post-Translational Modifications (PTMs) in proteins from a single blood sample. Before Promise’s tech, checking for one of these 200 protein modifications would require individual, separate tests. These PTMs are key to diagnosing and treating diseases like autoimmune disorders.
“It’s so substantial, it’s like moving from a black and white TV, to now seeing colors,” Veksler told TechCrunch. “You are seeing the same protein but in a completely different way.”
Having an easier way to test for these protein modifications could unlock the ability for precision medicine for autoimmune diseases in the same way that advancements in genomics allowed for precision treatment for cancer patients, Veksler said.
“When I practiced medicine, when you meet people with autoimmune diseases, these patients are under a constant race toward finding the best medication for them,” Veksler said. “It’s a series of trial and error which just doesn’t make sense when you have computational abilities these days.”
Veksler described his journey to Promise Bio as a number of pieces falling into place. After getting a medical degree and working as a physician for a few years, he got his PhD in the intersection of medicine and engineering before the pandemic. After stints as a physician, and at a friend’s startup, C2i Genomics, he knew he wanted to do something involving software, precision medicine, and autoimmune disorders.
His wife, Gal Noyman-Veksler, a partner at VC LionBird, came home one day in 2021 and told him that she had met Yifat Merbl, a senior scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel who was looking to spin out the computational biology tech she was working on.
Veksler described the scenario as a “perfect fit.” Alongside Assaf Kacen, co-founder and CTO, Promise Bio was formally founded in January 2023 and has been operating in stealth ever since. The company is already working with multiple large hospitals in the U.S. and Israel, as well as drug companies, including AstraZeneca and Pfizer.
Promise Bio is now emerging from stealth with a previously undisclosed $8.3 million seed round in tow that closed in April 2023. The majority of the capital came from lead investor Awz Ventures in addition to strategic investors AstraZeneca and Pfizer. The company is using the funds to hire more people for its team and toward building a database of the PTM data points the company is gathering in its tests to be used for future research and development.
Roni Alsheich, a general partner at Awz Ventures, told TechCrunch that he’s really bullish on Promise Bio’s team, jokingly adding that it’s a very promising company. He added that the traction the company has been able to get thus far from legacy institutions like Pfizer and AstraZeneca is notable.
“If Pfizer is interested in this company, and AstraZeneca and researchers with these institutes and hospitals are interested in this company, we believe it is a real validation,” Alsheich said. “It’s only the beginning. I don’t know any other company with this age with so much traction with the [pharmaceutical] giants.”
Veksler said that Promise Bio has gotten inbound interest from researchers and drug developers targeting other conditions like neuro indications, but the team is focused on autoimmune disorders for now — which impact an estimated 4% of the global populatio .
“It’s really crazy that we are doing the same process as we were managing these diseases 15 years ago,” Veksler said. “The number of therapeutic options is only increasing. It’s not sustainable. We can not continue on this trial and error from pharma companies.”
This piece has been updated to include information on the startup’s third co-founder