Basecamp Research has raised $140 million in a Series C financing round to develop its artificial intelligence platform and advance a pipeline of AI-designed medicines toward clinical development.
The London-based company is developing AI models called EDEN that are designed to understand biology and help create new therapeutic candidates. Basecamp plans to use the new funding to train the next generation of EDEN models and support its work on medicines that could help the body repair itself.
The financing round was oversubscribed and was led by S32, with participation from Menlo Ventures’ Anthology Fund, Catalio Capital Management, European Tech Collective, Firebrand River Capital, Inception Fund, King Philanthropies, NATO Innovation Fund, NVIDIA, PostScriptum, Redalpine, The Rockefeller Foundation, Singular, Sovereign AI and True Ventures.
Basecamp is initially applying its EDEN technology to in vivo cell therapy, an approach that aims to reprogram a patient’s cells directly inside the body. The company believes this could address some of the limitations of current cell therapies, which can involve complex manufacturing processes and high treatment costs.
The company is combining EDEN’s ability to design long and complex DNA sequences with serine recombinases, enzymes that can precisely insert DNA into the genome. Basecamp said the technology could eventually support more complex and customizable cell therapies for diseases including cancer and autoimmune disorders.
Basecamp has reported preclinical results across several therapeutic areas and plans to expand its pharmaceutical partnerships. The company has also appointed Richard Pearce, formerly of Biogen, as chief business officer.
At the center of Basecamp’s AI platform is its Trillion Gene Atlas, which the company describes as the world’s largest proprietary biological AI training dataset. The dataset has been developed through partnerships involving biological data from more than 30 countries across all seven continents.
The company says the data helps EDEN models identify biological patterns that may not be captured by conventional AI systems designed for a single scientific task. Basecamp is using the models to explore the design of different therapeutic approaches, including cell and gene therapies, enzymes and peptides.
The company has also worked with Anthropic on Claude Science to demonstrate how its biological data and AI models can be used to generate potential therapeutic candidates.
With the new funding, Basecamp Research plans to continue developing its AI models and move its pipeline of AI-designed therapeutics closer to clinical development. The company is headquartered in London and has offices and laboratories in Cambridge, Massachusetts.