Investment to support more effective therapies for cancer, chronic inflammation, neurodegeneration, and other serious health conditions
LOUISVILLE, KY and MARLBOROUGH, MA / ACCESSWIRE / March 12, 2024 / Future Labs Capital, a private equity venture capital firm that invests in best-in-class quantum computing and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, announces an additional investment in AssayQuant Technologies, Inc. (AssayQuant), a life science company headquartered in Marlborough, Massachusetts. Founded by scientists, AssayQuant provides advancements in assay design to help deliver breakthrough discoveries needed to improve human health and well-being.
The undisclosed investment from Future Labs Capital will accelerate revenue growth and fuel AssayQuant's expansion of its proprietary PhosphoSens® technology into different disease areas and new formats to support the development of more effective therapies for cancer, chronic inflammation, neurodegeneration, and other serious conditions where targeting kinases and phosphatases is a critical focus. PhosphoSens uses novel fluorogenic sensors in enzyme recognition sequences carefully optimized for each enzyme to relay quantitative information on phosphorylation in real time and with less effort.
"We're thrilled to strengthen our investment and partnership with AssayQuant," said Mack Shwab, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Future Labs Capital. "AssayQuant's PhosphoSens technology holds unique promise in delivering profound insights into kinase and phosphatase biology, ultimately advancing the landscape of disease treatments."
AssayQuant's cutting-edge products and services enable researchers in the biotechnology and pharma industries, contract research organizations (CROs), and government and academic labs to optimize kinase and phosphatase drug research and development. Originating from the esteemed Imperiali Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) under the guidance of Dr. Barbara Imperiali, AssayQuant leverages its expertise in assay development and state-of-the-art technologies to deliver robust products that enable breakthrough discoveries and boost productivity, ultimately benefiting human health.
"Future Labs Capital's commitment to innovation to improve human health throughout the world is a perfect match to AssayQuant's vision and demonstrated capabilities towards optimizing pharma and biotech targeted disease intervention," said Dr. Erik Schaefer, AssayQuant's CEO, CSO, and co-founder. "Our world-class team is applying innovation across disciplines in assay technologies, targeted drug discovery, automation, and bioinformatics to achieve this goal by providing transformative assays in an easy-to-use platform. This investment by Future Labs Capital allows us to advance these efforts and grow our global customer base."
"I am delighted with this meaningful commitment from Future Labs Capital, which will support future growth and advances in our company's powerful technologies for science and discovery," said Dr. Barbara Imperiali, AssayQuant's CTO and co-founder and inventor of the core technology exclusively licensed to AssayQuant by MIT. "I am deeply proud of the progress made by our team to create a robust offering that is being adopted by many academic institutions and leading drug development companies."
The human genome harbors 538 protein kinases and 190 protein phosphatases, collectively controlling nearly every cellular function by regulating the phosphorylation status of thousands of proteins and 230,000 modification sites, thus altering their signaling pathways. Disruptions in these pathways constitute pivotal events in cancer and various other diseases, impacting cell metabolism, proliferation, growth, differentiation, and apoptosis. The pursuit of drugs that modulate these enzymes is widespread, constituting over 30% of all drug development endeavors. Despite the approval of over 100 kinase inhibitors, these approved drugs only target a limited spectrum of kinases to date, leaving a large field of opportunity. There remains a conspicuous absence of approved drugs targeting phosphatases. This underscores the pressing necessity for innovative assay technologies to speed and optimize targeted drug development, an imperative that AssayQuant's dedicated team is actively addressing.
This funding announcement from Future Labs Capital follows closely on the heels of AssayQuant's latest addition to its commercial portfolio: KinSight KinomeTM Selectivity Profiling launched as a fully automated service in the fall of 2023. This innovative service is part of a suite of distinct offerings to enhance compound selectivity profiling and potency determinations to accelerate improved drug development.
To learn more about Future Labs Capital, visit https://futurelabscapital.com/.
To learn more about AssayQuant, visit http://www.assayquant.com/.
About Future Labs Capital
Future Labs Capital, LLC is a private equity venture capital firm that is active in the pursuit of solutions to the world's most important problems while enabling and guiding early-stage company development. Focused primarily on quantum computing and artificial intelligence (AI) startups, Future Labs Capital has formed a strategic partnership with MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), connecting outside ventures with best-in-class MIT technologies. For more on Future Labs Capital, visit https://futurelabscapital.com/.
About AssayQuant
AssayQuant® Technologies, Inc. (AssayQuant) is an innovative, technology-driven, commercial-stage life science tools company. AssayQuant develops and markets an expanding menu of >670 proprietary and novel fluorescence-based assays for kinases and phosphatases for researchers in the biotechnology and pharma industries, CROs, and government and academic labs.
AssayQuant's assays integrate proprietary sensor technology that is exclusively licensed from MIT and is incorporated into catalog products and CRO services that support drug discovery to enable the development of more effective therapies targeting kinase- and phosphatase-mediated diseases. AssayQuant's proprietary PhosphoSens technology provides direct and continuous quantitative monitoring of phosphorylation/dephosphorylation events in a simple add-and-read format, yielding a progress curve in every well for deep enzymological characterization of drugs that modulate kinase/phosphatase activity. The company harnesses innovative approaches using AI, Machine Learning (ML), and customized computational tools to automate PhosphoSens® data analysis. Likewise, the company is leveraging AI and ML to power its "Science-first" commercialization process, accelerating both inbound and outbound marketing and customer acquisition. AssayQuant is based in Marlborough, MA. For more on AssayQuant, visit http://www.assayquant.com/.
Media Contacts:
Future Labs Capital:
Tamara Davis
Director of PR
(270) 202-8516
tdavis@priceweber.com
AssayQuant Technologies, Inc.:
Kelsey Swartz, Ph.D.
Marketing Manager
News@AssayQuant.com
SOURCE: Future Labs Capital
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