A new George Church startup raises $16M. The first-time founders have a ‘crazy vision’ to bring ML to cell therapy

By her own ad­mis­sion, Eliz­a­beth Wood is far from a typ­i­cal biotech CEO.

Fit­ting­ly, she’s build­ing an un­con­ven­tion­al start­up in JU­RA Bio, which an­nounced on Thurs­day a $16.1 mil­lion seed round to bring ma­chine learn­ing in­to de­vel­op­ing cell ther­a­pies. Wood co-found­ed JU­RA back in 2017 along­side Julie Norville, an MIT bio­engi­neer­ing PhD who is JU­RA’s chief tech­nol­o­gy of­fi­cer.

The Har­vard bi­ol­o­gist George Church is al­so a founder, telling End­points News he ex­pects JU­RA to play a role in an “amaz­ing rev­o­lu­tion” that ap­plies ma­chine learn­ing to com­plex li­braries of drug can­di­dates. He says JU­RA is one of six biotechs he has found­ed around that theme. Oth­ers in­clude Shape Ther­a­peu­tics for RNA edit­ing, Dyno Ther­a­peu­tics on op­ti­miz­ing AAV vec­tors, Nabla Bio for de­sign­ing an­ti­bod­ies, and Man­i­fold Bio for pro­tein ther­a­peu­tics.

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