Building EpiBiologics: Mubadala’s company creation strategy
By Alaa Halawa and Amy Liu
Since launching Mubadala’s biotech venture strategy, we have aspired to support groundbreaking platform technologies that hold the potential to bring life-saving therapies to millions of patients worldwide. From covalent chemistry to cell therapy to epigenetic editing, we have worked closely with numerous early-stage companies and scientific founders to develop their business development strategy, recruit world-leading scientific teams, and establish successful pharma collaborations.
Today, we are pleased to announce the newest addition to our healthcare portfolio: EpiBiologics, a biotechnology company building a next-generation antibody-based protein degradation platform for membrane and extracellular drug targets.
This investment is our second company creation effort. From the very beginning, we have rolled up our sleeves and provided operational support to help build EpiBiologics from the ground up. In partnership with Polaris Partners, our team worked behind the scenes, from finding lab space to providing scientific, operational, and financial support — we were as much investors as we were first employees.
So why EpiBiologics? We realized early-on the immense potential of this powerful platform technology. Spun out of the laboratory of Dr. Jim Wells, co-founder and renowned antibody engineer of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), the company’s proprietary EpiTAC platform expands the targeted protein degradation landscape to the extracellular space, enabling the company to target both membrane proteins and secreted proteins (~40% of the proteome) using bispecific antibodies.
In August 2021, we began engaging with Jim on the latest findings from this lab.
At the same time, Polaris (our investment partners in Neumora Therapeutics and Auron Therapeutics) were also digging into Jim’s research. Both investment teams shared a similar vision for the potential of the platform — the ability to build an atlas of tissue specific degrader antibodies that can address a wide range of indications including cancer, immunology, and neuro-related conditions.
We started company operations in February 2022, with two founding scientists from the Wells Lab, in a small incubator lab in San Carlos with one office and a few lab benches. We recognized that early hires define our culture so we carefully selected for a set of early employees who can represent the diverse, hard-working, and energetic culture we hoped to create with EpiBiologics.
Since these humble beginnings, we’ve made tremendous progress with our current team of ~20 employees and a permanent lab set up in San Mateo, CA. The recent close of EpiBiologics’ $50 million series A financing validates the efforts from both Mubadala Capital and Polaris Partners in creating a leading company in the extracellular degradation space. Mubadala Capital is excited to continue supporting EpiBiologics as the company seeks to strengthen the platform, advance its pipeline of drug candidates, and expand the talented team of scientists.
In addition to the recent financing announcement, we’re proud to welcome Shyra Gardai as Chief Scientific Officer of EpiBiologics. Her expertise in building technologies will strengthen EpiBiologics’ ability to validate its EpiTAC platform, establish pharma partnerships and expand the company’s fundraising efforts.
Our experience in building EpiBiologics taught us one thing: It takes a village. We’re excited to build out our network of investor and operating partners, entrepreneurs in residence (EIRs) to help us identify strong scientific founders and incredible platform technologies with applicability across a broad set of indications. By supporting foundational science and assets with tremendous clinical potential, we believe we can generate value and increase the probability of success in bringing novel therapeutics to patients in need.
As we continue to build Mubadala’s healthcare ventures ecosystem, we’re looking forward to rolling up our sleeves, working with like-minded collaborators, and scaling our efforts in launching the next generation of healthcare companies.
Learn more about the work EpiBiologics is doing — here.
