Spring adds $32M, bolsters exec team to fuel technology and pipeline for aging therapeutics
Spring builds world-leading technology that gives scientists the superpowers they need to develop therapies for aging.
Treating the drivers of age-related disease is one of our most important chances to dramatically reduce suffering— and scientists on the front line of this battle are equipped with yesterday’s tools. We believe they should possess the best technology in the world.
I can’t wait to open up more about our tech, therapeutic pipeline, and brewing discovery programs, but first three major milestones…
First, we’re proud to share our $32M oversubscribed Series B led by General Catalyst and Elad Gil with strong participation from existing supporters Caffeinated Capital, Felicis, Quiet Fund, Heritage Group, First Round, and more. And we’re honored to add new investors to this group — Sparta Group, Tencent, Anne Wojcicki, Lachy Groom, Josh Buckley, Julia Lipton, and others.
With this capital we continue to build our machine learning+wetlab automation-powered technology, pursue multiple discovery programs, and advance our clinical-stage pipeline.
Second, we’ve strengthened our leadership team with incredible execs.
Tim Sullivan joins to lead BD as Chief Business Officer. Tim’s a veteran biotech exec with extensive experience in corporate development, strategy, and immunology. Prior, Tim was VP of BD at Arcus Bio, Senior Director of External R&D Innovation at Pfizer, Director of External Innovation at Takeda, and Research Director at ChemoCentryx.
Ransi Somaratne joins to lead our clinical efforts as Chief Medical Officer. Ransi is a successful drug developer with experience in all stages of clinical development, product, and regulatory strategy across multiple therapeutic areas. Most recently Chief Medical Officer of Epirium Bio, Ransi previously also led teams at BioMarin, NGM, Amgen, and more.
An Nguyen teamed up with us a few years ago when her tech-enabled consultancy for biotech, Innovatively, joined forces with Spring. She’s now our VP of Decision Science and Strategy, bringing the art of decision science to Spring’s operations alongside 15+ years in pharma/biotech spanning the full development cycle as a consultant, operator, and investor.
Paul Sekhri joins Spring’s board of directors with decades of life science leadership experience as a founder, executive, and CEO. Currently President & CEO of eGenesis, Paul has also been a member of 25+ public and private biotech company boards, including leading technology companies like Veeva Systems.
And finally, I’m proud to share that last year we did something quite unusual in biotech — we spun out the Spring Research Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, to run a COVID clinical trial testing a cheap, generic drug.
This drug was identified by our immune aging platform (learn more here and here), and we’re deeply indebted to the forward-thinking donors who supported testing a novel, generic COVID therapeutic (w/ no commercial benefit but huge possible benefit for the world) arising from asking the question, “Why are outcomes so dramatically skewed against older adults?”
Spring Research Foundation’s trial initiated last year — follow along on clinicaltrials.gov.
We’ve got a full slate of announcements, pipeline updates, and tech unveilings in coming months. For now, we thank the many supporters and Springlings joining this ambitious mission (you can join too!).
We’re thrilled to be working alongside such a rapidly strengthening team, advancing clinical-stage therapies, running multiple discovery programs, and most importantly putting world-leading technology in the hands of scientists fighting our most ambitious battle against disease.
