{"id":24009,"date":"2025-07-26T16:51:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T16:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/24009\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T16:51:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T16:51:15","slug":"pfizer-astrazeneca-back-promise-bios-autoimmune-fix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/24009\/","title":{"rendered":"Pfizer, AstraZeneca back Promise Bio’s autoimmune fix"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Rotem<\/p>\n

Promise Bio co-founders (from left): CEO Dr. Ronel Veksler, MD-PhD; scientific co-founder Prof. Yifat Merbl, Ph.D.; and CTO Dr. Assaf Kacen, Ph.D. [Promise Bio\/Rotem Barak]<\/p>\n

The Tel Aviv startup Promise Bio<\/a> claims its \u201ccolor-TV\u201d epiproteomics could slash trial-and-error prescribing for autoimmune disease, an area that already drains more than $100 billion<\/a> in U.S. health-care spending each year.<\/p>\n

The company aims to bring a precision medicine approach, which has elevated oncology treatments, to immune-mediated diseases. CEO and co-founder Dr. Ronel Veksler, an MD\/PhD-turned-entrepreneur with both medical and electrical engineering degrees, opines that for all its promise in oncology, precision medicine has overlooked many other areas of medicine.<\/p>\n

The reason, he explains, is that while genomics works well for cancers that originate from DNA mutations, it falls short for complex chronic diseases where proteins are chemically modified after they\u2019re made. That\u2019s the domain of epiproteomics.<\/p>\n

Big pharma bets on \u201ccolor TV\u201d for proteins<\/p>\n

Promise Bio emerged from stealth in December 2024, though its seed round closed in April 2023 with most of the cash coming from Awz Ventures. Strategic minority tickets arrived via AION Labs, the Israeli AI-drug-discovery incubator whose members include Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Merck KGaA, Teva and Amazon Web Services.<\/p>\n

Direct U.S. treatment costs for autoimmune disorders exceed $100 billion a year, NIH-cited estimates show, while only 30-40% of patients achieve significant remission on today\u2019s biologics. \u201cThey\u2019re staying on that medication for three to six months before the physicians can re-evaluate whether the treatment is working or not,\u201d Veksler said.<\/p>\n

If it doesn\u2019t work, like in many of the cases, they have to either switch drug class or stay in the same drug class but switch medication or increase dose. It\u2019s insane, and it\u2019s very not sustainable.\u2014Veksler said<\/p>\n

Promise Bio thinks epiproteomics, the study of post-translational protein modifications<\/a> (PTMs), is the missing data layer. Its cloud platform reads dozens of PTMs from a single blood sample, something Veksler says wasn\u2019t possible before: \u201cPeople have been working on looking at post-translational modifications on a very limited scope, between one to three simultaneously. We, with our technology, are now looking at dozens of modifications simultaneously without any extra lab work.\u201d<\/p>\n

The startup\u2019s rapid rise signals big pharma\u2019s belief in its mission. The $9 million seed included $8.3 million in diluted funds and $700,000 in non-diluted grants. \u201cWe were very fortunate to have Pfizer and AstraZeneca joining as early strategic investors,\u201d Veksler said. \u201cWe have several types of collaboration with them, and it all revolves around the basic ability of just understanding biology better.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s edge lies in its epiproteomics platform, which analyzes post-translational modifications from a single blood sample, generating 2-10 gigabytes of data per run. This isn\u2019t theoretical: PTMs like HbA1c for diabetes, anti-CCP for rheumatoid arthritis, and p-tau for Alzheimer\u2019s are already clinical staples, proving the approach\u2019s value.<\/p>\n

Addressing a $100 billion trial-and-error system<\/p>\n

Autoimmune diseases, affecting 4% of the global population, represent a $100 billion-plus market in direct U.S. treatment costs alone, according to NIH estimates. Yet, the current system is broken. \u201cWhen you look at the number of therapeutic options that physicians have now, that number keeps increasing, but we don\u2019t have a better way to help guide this clinical decision making,\u201d Veksler said. Patients cycle through biologics or small molecules, waiting three to six months per attempt, only to see 60-70% fail to achieve significant remission.<\/p>\n

Promise Bio\u2019s platform aims to end this trial-and-error nightmare by identifying biomarkers for treatment response and stratifying patients for clinical trials. Its 2022 Nature Biotechnology publication<\/a> validated the tech, and partnerships with academic institutions and proprietary studies are building what Veksler calls \u201cthe largest database of its kind focusing on post-translational modifications or epiproteomics.\u201d This creates a \u201cflywheel effect, where the more data we curate, the more we can advance our models,\u201d sharpening predictions for responders versus non-responders. Pharma companies, eager to boost trial success rates, are already knocking. \u201cWe\u2019ve been approached several times by companies looking to understand how their drug is affecting specific biological pathways,\u201d Veksler noted.<\/p>\n

The stakes are high. With precision medicine stalled outside oncology, Promise Bio\u2019s approach could unlock data-driven decisions for immune-mediated diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, colitis, and lupus. \u201cPrecision medicine approaches, beyond just the buzzword, we will get there because that\u2019s the only sustainable way,\u201d Veksler said. \u201cThe interests should be aligned between the patients, the physicians, the insurance, the providers.\u201d As Promise Bio eyes its next funding round in 2025, its $9 million head start and big pharma backing position it to reshape a $100 billion market and save billions in wasted healthcare spending.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Promise Bio co-founders (from left): CEO Dr. Ronel Veksler, MD-PhD; scientific co-founder Prof. Yifat Merbl, Ph.D.; and CTO…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,137,500],"class_list":["post-24009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}