Safety is paramount in the drug discovery and development process. However, despite recent technological strides, unforeseen toxicity continues to be one of the most significant and costly drivers of failure in drug discovery campaigns. 

This is why we are excited to back Sable Bio, a London-based tech bio startup on a mission to change how biotech and pharma companies evaluate drug target safety for effective decision-making. The company is developing a unique AI-enhanced platform designed to offer pharmaceutical companies predictive safety insights, mitigating the risk of clinical trial failures. 

Founded in 2023 by Alex de Giorgio, PhD and Josh Almond-Thynne, PhD – a team of AI-driven drug discovery experts who in their previous roles at BenevolentAI produced a series of innovations with company-wide and external adoption –  Sable aims to provide scientists with richer specialist data, initially concentrating on toxicology. 

To deliver predictive safety insights at key drug development decision points, Sable Bio’s platform extracts proprietary signals from structured and unstructured data sources. Leveraging large language models (LLMs), causal inference, and deep biological data knowledge to build predictive and interpretable indicators validated against real-world benchmarks, the platform enables scientists to explore results holistically with transparent explanations.

Josh Almond-Thynne, co-founder of Sable Bio highlights:

“We are really excited, this investment will help Sable Bio redefine drug safety assessment and change the ways actionable biomedical insights are generated. Working with leading investors Episode1 and Seedcamp is enabling us to build an exceptional team and a platform to accelerate safer drug development for patients in need”

On why we invested our Partner Tom Willson comments:

“Taking drugs to market from discovery to development and beyond takes far too long and toxicity is a major factor adding delays or causing such processes to fail entirely. Sable is perfectly positioned to solve this problem by providing access to the right data at the right time to those who need it, leveraging LLMs to surface data that would have previously been impossible to cover fully. Alex and Josh as co-founders have the ideal blend of scientific excellence, specific domain experience and entrepreneurially drive to be building Sable and we’re delighted to have the opportunity to partner with them.”

We are excited to participate in Sable Bio’s oversubscribed £1.5 million pre-seed funding round, led by Episode1 Ventures. With the new funding, the founders plan to build out a stellar team of scientists and engineers to enable the refinement and enhancement of their core technological infrastructure, providing a solid and expansive foundation for their data capabilities.

The company is currently seeking to establish partnerships with biotech, pharma, and healthtech companies, as well as academic collaborations.

For more information, visit sablebio.com.