Eli Lilly, Merck Invest in Verge Genomics

<p><strong>SAN FRANCISCO<&sol;strong> &&num;8212&semi; Verge Genomics&comma; a drug discovery company that is using artificial intelligence &lpar;AI&rpar; and human data to develop new drugs&comma; has closed an oversubscribed &dollar;98 million equity financing&period; The Series B financing was led by funds managed by BlackRock and includes new healthcare and technology investors Eli Lilly and Company&comma; Merck Global Health Innovation Fund &lpar;Merck GHI&rpar;&comma; Section 32&comma; and Vulcan Capital&comma; alongside Verge’s existing investors&comma; including Threshold Ventures&comma; ALS Investment Fund&comma; Tao Capital Partners&comma; Lifeforce Capital&comma; and others&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;We are thrilled that multiple stakeholders in our space&comma; from leading pharmaceutical companies to healthcare and technology investors&comma; recognize the potential of our human-centric AI platform to transform drug discovery for the most challenging diseases of our generation&comma;” said Alice Zhang&comma; co-founder and CEO of Verge Genomics&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Our platform has demonstrated its ability to identify novel targets from human datasets for these diseases and rapidly develop them into proprietary clinical candidates&period; With our Series B completed&comma; the quality and breadth of our shareholder base allows us to validate our platform in the clinic&period; The addition of new clinical datasets has the potential to dramatically improve our self-reinforcing learning platform and accelerate us towards our mission of developing better drugs&comma; faster&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Verge has built an end-to-end&comma; AI-driven drug discovery platform that includes one of the field’s largest proprietary genomic datasets from human brain tissue&period; Since its Series A in 2018&comma; Verge has become one of the first AI-enabled drug discovery companies to discover a novel target and develop it internally into a proprietary clinical candidate entirely using its platform&period; In July 2021&comma; the company announced a &dollar;706 million partnership with Lilly to develop new treatments for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis &lpar;ALS&rpar; using its platform&period; Funding from the Series B will be used to exponentially grow the number of preclinical and clinical programs in Verge’s pipeline and advance its lead programs through clinical testing&period; Additionally&comma; Verge will continue to expand its proprietary technology to enable improvements in many steps of the drug discovery process including translational medicine and clinical development&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Exponential improvements in technology are converging to create an inflection point in drug development&comma;” said William Abecassis&comma; BlackRock’s Head of Innovation Capital&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Verge has uniquely positioned itself to harness this opportunity&comma; having developed both a world-class AI discovery platform and the most comprehensive neurodegenerative genomic database of human patients in the world&period; Together with their team of prominent leaders in neuroscience&comma; we are excited to be supporting them in shaping the next era of technology-enabled drug development&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>David M&period; Rubin&comma; PhD&period;&comma; Managing Director of Merck GHI added&colon; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Identifying better targets is one of the critical challenges faced in drug discovery today&period; The speed with which Verge advanced their lead program underscores the platform’s potential to develop new candidates with greater efficiency&period; We are pleased to be joining this financing alongside experts from pharma&comma; healthcare and technology who share the belief that Verge’s platform has the potential to deliver life-changing medicines to patients&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;