Helsinki- and Cambridge-based biotech startup Switchpoint Bio has raised $5.3 million in a pre-seed funding round as it emerges from stealth. The funding includes a $5 million investment from Treehouse Delmar Investments.
Many modern medicines are designed to target specific biological processes in the human body. However, it is often difficult for drug developers to understand how a patient’s biology changes after treatment begins. It can also be challenging to explain why some patients respond well to a drug while others do not.
Traditional methods have several limitations. Clinical trial results can take months or even years to become available. Tissue biopsies are invasive and difficult to repeat, while regular blood tests may show whether a treatment is working without explaining what is happening inside the body.
Switchpoint Bio is developing a new blood-based technology to address this challenge. The company’s platform studies immune cells in the blood to identify changes linked to diseases, environmental factors and medical treatments.
By combining advanced epigenomic analysis with artificial intelligence (AI), Switchpoint Bio aims to help drug developers better understand how diseases affect the body and how patients respond to different treatments.
The technology is designed to help researchers track biological changes before and after a patient receives a drug. It can help answer important questions, such as what is happening in the body before treatment, how the body changes after taking a medicine and which biological changes remain despite treatment.
By making these changes easier to measure over time, Switchpoint Bio hopes to help drug developers understand treatment responses earlier. This could also help researchers identify which patients are more likely to benefit from a medicine and why some patients may not respond.
“Drug developers need to know not only whether a patient responds, but what biology changed, what persisted and why. Our goal is to make these biological switchpoints visible from a routine blood sample, repeatedly and at the scale required for drug development,” said Samuel Myllykangas, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Switchpoint Bio.
“We take a long-term view, backing science we believe can genuinely change how disease is understood and treated. Switchpoint Bio brings together exceptional scientific talent with a real path to turning breakthrough biology into evidence that helps patients, and we’re proud to support that work,” said Dave Proctor of Treehouse Delmar Investments.
Switchpoint Bio is developing a blood-based technology that studies DNA methylation to understand changes in the body. Its platform focuses on specific regions of DNA linked to diseases and immune system activity. This approach aims to provide detailed results at a lower cost, helping drug developers better understand how treatments affect the body.
