Biotech company Parallel Bio has raised $21 million in a Series A funding led by AIX Ventures.  

The round attracted new investors Amplo and Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce, and existing investors Metaplanet, Humba Ventures, Atypical Ventures, Undeterred Capital, and Jeff Dean.  

Robert DiFazio, CEO and Co-Founder at Parallel Bio, commented: “For too long, the reliance on lab mice to model human biology has come at a high cost: 95% of drugs fail in human trials even after succeeding in animal studies. We’re turning that on its head by using organoids and AI to discover drugs in true-to-life human models from the start.” 

Parallel Bio will use the new capital to scale the AI and automation capabilities of its organoid-based immune system platform, expand its team of scientists and engineers, and support growing pharmaceutical partnerships.  

To date, Parallel Bio has raised a total of nearly $30 million, including this Series A and previous seed rounds.  

Parallel Bio’s platform combines lymph-node organoids with AI and robotics to replicate the human immune system at scale across diverse populations.

“Starting with human models enables new drugs to reach the market at a pace never possible before,” said Juliana Hilliard, Parallel Bio Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer. “We aim to slash $2 billion and 9 years from each drug candidate in development by predicting success at the earliest stages of discovery.” 

Universal flu vaccine studies

Parallel Bio has partnered with Centivax to generate human-first data to validate Centivax’s first programme: a universal flu vaccine called Centi-Flu that is now in manufacturing for human clinical trials, with the first patient expected to be dosed early next year. 

Human immune organoids were ‘vaccinated’ with Centi-Flu, leading to the production of B cells capable of reacting to a wide variety of flu strains. The immune organoids were derived from patients with prior flu exposure, proving that Centi-Flu could trigger broad humoral responses in flu-exposed individuals.  

The organoid model also showed activation of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, which are important for fighting infections, suggesting that Centi-Flu helps stimulate both antibody production and T cell immunity.

Diana Spencer, Senior Digital Content Editor, DDW