ALLOX, a biotechnology company focused on drug discovery, has raised US$10.5 million (€9.4 million) in a seed funding round. The round was led by Asabys through its Sabadell Asabys II fund, with participation from CDTI through its SICC Innvierte fund and the Institut Català de Finances (ICF). The company has also appointed Morten Graugaard as Independent Chair of its Board of Directors.
The new funding will help ALLOX expand its technology platform and develop AI models to identify promising areas of proteins that could be targeted to create new medicines. The company aims to use its experimental data and AI technology to discover more precise treatments. The investment will also help strengthen its internal drug discovery team, advance several drug development programmes and build partnerships with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.
Júlia Domingo, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of ALLOX, said: “This financing marks an important milestone, enabling us to advance our internal drug discovery pipeline while expanding the capabilities of our experimental platform and proprietary AI models. By combining large-scale functional data with predictive AI, we aim to unlock a much broader range of challenging drug targets and accelerate the discovery of truly differentiated small-molecule therapeutics. Morten’s guidance and leadership, along with the support of our investors, will be instrumental in advancing our programs and maximizing the long-term potential of our platform.”
Morten Graugaard, newly appointed Independent Chair of the Board of ALLOX, commented: “ALLOX is addressing one of the most important challenges in drug discovery by unlocking therapeutic opportunities that have historically proven difficult to drug. The team is building a differentiated platform based on high-throughput biophysical data, that stands at the intersection of experimental biology and computation, with the potential to unlock new drug discovery opportunities. Importantly, ALLOX fills a critical data gap, enabling the development of functional molecules rather than simply identifying binders. I’m excited to join ALLOX at such a pivotal stage of its development and I look forward to working alongside Júlia, the leadership team and the Board as the company scales its platform and pipeline.”
Clara Campàs, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Asabys Partners, noted: “We believe ALLOX is uniquely positioned to expand the scope of druggable biology. The seed financing and Morten’s appointment strengthen both the company’s execution capacity and governance as it advances its platform and begins to translate it into a focused therapeutic pipeline. Given his longstanding track record of success, Morten’s appointment is a huge vote of confidence in ALLOX and its approach.”
ALLOX (Allostery Exploration Technologies, S.L.) is a biotechnology company based in Barcelona, Spain. It is developing a platform that combines laboratory experiments and artificial intelligence (AI) to discover new targets for drug development. The company uses genetics, computational biology and drug discovery techniques to identify specific areas of proteins that could help researchers develop new treatments for diseases that are difficult to treat.
ALLOX was established as a spin-out from the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG). It was co-founded by Professor Ben Lehner, a leading researcher in genetics and predictive biology. He is currently Head of Generative Genomics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute.
