Generate Biomedicines: Changing How Medicines Are Made

The global medicine market is expected to grow at 3–6% CAGR through 2027 to about $1.9 trillion. With value that high, it’s perhaps surprising that development of new drugs remains a slow, expensive, trial-and-error process — and comes with a high failure rate.

The average R&D-to-marketplace cost for just one new medicine is nearly $4 billion, and can sometimes exceed $10 billion. Many pharmaceutical giants deploy as much as 25% of their revenue on R&D. Most of this spend is tied up in the earliest phases of drug discovery. According to McKinsey Life Science Insights, “Over the past decade, the average time for taking a new medication from candidate nomination to launch has been about 12 years.”

Generate Bio is radically changing this process with its ability to create new, on-demand drugs more quickly and cost-effectively. Its platform was trained from the ground up across millions of protein sequences to serve a wide range of therapies and diseases.

Proteins are the ​“doers” of cells; a partial list of the feats they perform include replicating DNA, fending off invading viruses, and keeping cells alive and healthy. That’s why most medicines approved today are, in fact, proteins.

Based on its exhaustive studies of proteins, Generate Bio has learned generalizable rules by which nature encodes function. It can apply those learned rules to create novel medicines with specific therapeutic functions. This breakthrough, called generative biology, represents a fundamental shift in what’s possible in the field of therapeutic development.

By marrying bio and tech in an integrated platform, Generate is able to simultaneously work on groundbreaking science while scaling discoveries for market to create a pipeline of life-changing medicines.

Building Biotech’s Future

Generate Biomedicines’ revolutionary approach to drug development was made possible by the company’s close-knit, cross-disciplinary team. Experts in machine learning (ML), biological engineering, and medicines —  all conversant in each other’s fields — combine talents to create a new field.

In its due diligence, AV identified Generate Bio’s team as one of the company’s primary strengths. The team includes Gevorg Grigoryan, Generate’s Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, who is also a tenured chemistry professor at Dartmouth and a widely published author. Molly Gipson, Chief Strategy / Innovation Officer, also helped co-found Generate as part of Flagship Pioneerings’ venture-creation team. CEO Mike Nally was previously CMO at Merck & Co., responsible for global marketing and brand strategy across a portfolio of innovative medicines and vaccines exceeding $40 billion in revenue.

Since Nally’s tenure began in 2021, Generate has raised $370 million in Series B financing to advance its platform. It also signed its first research collaboration agreement with a pioneering biotechnology firm — with a potential transaction value of $1.9 billion, plus future royalties. And the company secured growing room with 140k+ square feet of new space at Boynton Yards and Andover locations in Massachusetts. 

How We Are Involved

In September 2023, Generate Bio announced it had closed a $273M Series C. The funding will advance a pipeline of 17 existing programs and approximately 10 new starts annually. Since 2020, the company has raised nearly $700 million in equity financing.

Alumni Ventures joined the Series C raise alongside lead investor Flagship Pioneering, who has funded 100+ science-based businesses — including both Generate and Moderna — worth more than $30 billion in aggregate value. Other investors in the round include Amgen, one of the largest global biotech companies, and NVentures, the VC arm of leading AI hardware and software developer NVIDIA.

Participating alongside Purple Arch were the following AV Funds: 116 Street Fund, Arbor Street Fund, The Fence Fund, Fowler Street Fund,  Healthtech Fund, and Total Access Fund, as well as AV investors who participated in a Syndication opportunity.