Seismic Therapeutic has secured $121m in a Series B funding round to advance the development of its immunology pipeline. 

New investor Bessemer Venture Partners led the financing round with other new investors Alexandria Venture Investments, Amgen Ventures, Codon Capital, Gaingels and GC&H taking part.

The Series B round also saw participation from current investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Timothy A Springer, Polaris Partners and Boxer Capital.

The company will use the funds to progress the Phase I proof-of-mechanism clinical trials of its lead programmes, S-1117 and S-4321.

S-1117 is a pan‑immunoglobulin (Ig) G protease sculpting enzyme candidate (Sc) and S-4321 is a PD-1 agonist Fc gamma receptor IIb selective dual-cell bidirectional (DcB) antibody candidate. 

Seismic will also use the proceeds to expand its pipeline in the IgSc and DcB product categories.

With this investment, the company will expand its machine learning-powered IMPACT platform by deploying new approaches to improve biologics drug discovery in the immunology field. 

Bessemer Venture Partners biotech and healthcare partner Andrew Hedin will join the board of directors of Seismic.

The latest investment takes the funds raised by the company to $222m.

The company has already progressed two programmes into investigational new drug application (IND)-enabling trials since its founding and a Series A funding round raise.

Seismic Therapeutic founder, president and CEO Jo Viney stated: “We are delighted to secure the support of such a strong syndicate of investors who believe in Seismic’s ability to pioneer a new era of immunology drug development integrating machine learning. 

“This financing enables us to continue our momentum and advance both of our exciting lead programmes into the clinic. We believe the time is right to harness advances in machine learning to discover the next generation of biologics drugs to improve the lives of patients with autoimmune diseases.”