Biotechnology company ALLOX has raised $10.5 million in a seed funding round to expand its drug discovery platform and advance its internal development programmes. The round was led by Asabys through its Sabadell Asabys II fund, with participation from CDTI through SICC Innvierte and the Institut Català de Finances (ICF).

ALLOX is developing a drug discovery platform that combines high-throughput genetics, experimental biology and artificial intelligence to identify previously unexplored opportunities for developing small-molecule therapeutics.

Drug discovery remains challenging for certain biological targets, particularly protein-protein interactions and transcription factors, which have historically been difficult to address with conventional approaches. ALLOX aims to overcome these limitations by identifying regulatory regions within proteins that could serve as potential targets for new treatments.

The company's platform measures the effects of thousands of genetic mutations in parallel to map regions that influence protein folding and interactions. This approach enables the identification of allosteric, orthosteric and other regulatory sites, including potential binding pockets that could be used to develop targeted small-molecule drugs.

Júlia Domingo, CEO and co-founder of ALLOX, said:

By combining large-scale functional data with predictive AI, we aim to unlock a much broader range of challenging drug targets and accelerate the discovery of truly differentiated small-molecule therapeutics.

Alongside the funding announcement, ALLOX has appointed Morten Graugaard as Independent Chair of its Board of Directors. He brings more than two decades of experience in life sciences investment, R&D and business development, having previously held senior positions at Orbis Medicines, Novo Holdings and Lundbeck.

Commenting on his appointment, Graugaard highlighted ALLOX's approach to drug discovery, which combines experimental biology and computational methods to identify therapeutic opportunities that have traditionally been difficult to address:

Importantly, ALLOX fills a critical data gap, enabling the development of functional molecules rather than simply identifying binders.

The new funding will support the expansion of the platform's capabilities and the development of proprietary AI models designed to predict therapeutic opportunities from large-scale biophysical datasets.

ALLOX also plans to strengthen its internal drug discovery team, advance multiple research programmes towards a pipeline of proprietary small-molecule drug candidates and establish research collaborations with pharmaceutical and biotechnology partners.