ALLOX Secures $10.5 Million Seed Funding and Appoints Morten Graugaard as Chairman
The Barcelona-based biotech firm will enhance its AI platform and drug discovery team with the new capital injection.
By Jordi Serra Martínez
••3 min read
AI
Generic image of the intersection between biotechnology and artificial intelligence, featuring laboratory elements and abstract patterns.
Biotechnology company ALLOX, based at the Barcelona Science Park of the University of Barcelona (PCB-UB), has closed a $10.5 million (9.4 million euro) seed funding round to scale its drug discovery platform and develop AI models.
The round was led by Asabys, through its Sabadell Asabys II fund, with participation from CDTI (via its SICC Innvierte) and the Institut Català de Finances (ICF). The funds will be used to scale up ALLOX's platform capabilities and develop proprietary AI models for predicting therapeutic targets, accelerating the discovery of selective allosteric modulators. The internal drug discovery team will also be strengthened to advance a focused portfolio of proprietary small molecules and facilitate strategic collaborations.
Morten Graugaard joins as independent Chairman of the Board, bringing over 20 years of experience in life science venture capital investment, R&D, and biotech company management. Graugaard has led significant industry acquisitions and strategic alliances, including the $658 million acquisition of Chelsea Therapeutics and a $1.8 billion global alliance with Otsuka Pharmaceutical.
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"This funding marks a significant milestone as it allows us to advance our internal drug discovery pipeline while simultaneously expanding the capabilities of our experimental platform and proprietary AI models. By combining large-scale functional data with predictive AI, we aim to address a much broader range of complex therapeutic targets and accelerate the discovery of truly differentiated small molecule drugs. Morten’s guidance and leadership, along with the support of our investors, will be instrumental in driving our programs forward and maximizing the long-term potential of our platform."
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"ALLOX addresses one of the most significant challenges in drug discovery, opening new therapeutic opportunities in targets that have historically been difficult to address pharmacologically. The team is developing a differentiated platform based on high-throughput biophysical data, situated at the intersection of experimental biology and computation, with the potential to generate novel drug discovery opportunities. Particularly important is that ALLOX covers a critical data gap, enabling the development of functional molecules rather than just identifying binding molecules. I am very excited to join ALLOX at such a pivotal stage of its development and look forward to working alongside Júlia, the management team, and the Board as the company grows its platform and project pipeline."
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"We believe ALLOX is uniquely positioned to expand the scope of biological targets amenable to pharmacological intervention. The seed funding and Morten’s appointment strengthen both the company’s execution capability and its governance, as it continues to advance platform development and begins to translate its potential into a focused therapeutic pipeline. Given his strong track record of success, Morten’s appointment represents a significant vote of confidence in ALLOX and its approach."
ALLOX combines high-throughput genetics, experimental biology, and artificial intelligence to systematically map and discover key functional nodes governing protein folding and interactions. By measuring the effects of thousands of mutations in parallel, its platform identifies allosteric, orthosteric, and other regulatory sites, including novel potential binding pockets. This information can then be used to design small molecule drugs targeting high-value targets that have historically been difficult to address pharmacologically, such as intracellular protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and transcription factors.
