The hype of ma­chine learn­ing has man­aged to bag se­ri­ous cash from in­vestors over the past year, and the lat­est biotech to en­ter the for­ay is look­ing to ap­ply it to can­cer.

Mass­a­chu­setts-based Au­ron Ther­a­peu­tics fo­cus­es on ther­a­pies that tar­get dys­reg­u­lat­ed cells that can lead to tu­mors and can­cer.

Ac­cord­ing to Au­ron CEO and founder Kate Yen, the biotech is de­vel­op­ing ther­a­pies that tar­get dis­rupt­ed cel­lu­lar dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion. To do that it has built a pro­pri­etary ma­chine learn­ing and com­pu­ta­tion­al plat­form dubbed AU­Ri­gin. The plat­form al­lows it to in­te­grate mul­ti omics da­ta sets from both nor­mal hu­man tis­sue and tu­mor sam­ples to help iden­ti­fy path­ways that are crit­i­cal for both nor­mal cel­lu­lar dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion and then how those path­ways have been hi­jacked by tu­mor cells.

“By un­der­stand­ing how tu­mor cells have hi­jacked nor­mal cel­lu­lar dif­ferenta­tion process­es, we can iden­ti­fy nov­el tar­gets to per­turb with the goal of caus­ing can­cer cells to stop pro­lif­er­at­ing by pro­mot­ing ter­mi­nal dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, and/or cell death,” Yen told End­points News.

Ac­cord­ing to Yen, the rea­son the com­pa­ny went with ma­chine learn­ing mod­els is be­cause it al­lows Au­ron to un­der­stand the path­ways that are crit­i­cal for pro­mot­ing nor­mal dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion. And the ma­chine learn­ing al­go­rithms al­so al­low bio­mark­ers to be iden­ti­fied that can ac­cu­rate­ly pre­dict dif­fer­ent stages of nor­mal dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion and how those bio­mark­ers are dys­reg­u­lat­ed in the tu­mor cells.

“By build­ing those mod­els, we can track how these mark­ers are dif­fer­ent in can­cer cells de­ter­mine dri­vers of dys­reg­u­lat­ed dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion in can­cer and ul­ti­mate­ly iden­ti­fy nov­el tar­gets,” she said.

Funds from the round give the com­pa­ny a run­way of two years, Yen said, which will be used to ad­vance Au­ron’s lead pro­gram to­ward clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and dri­ve ad­di­tion­al pro­grams in­to even­tu­al drug dis­cov­ery, but no time­line has been set for that. It will al­so be used to ex­pand the AU­Ri­gin plat­form as well as bring on four to five staff mem­bers.

The com­pa­ny cur­rent­ly sits at 11 staff mem­bers.

Yen sees the com­pa­ny, by tar­get­ing cel­lu­lar dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, as what sets them apart from the com­pe­ti­tion.

“Most cur­rent can­cer ther­a­pies don’t tar­get cel­lu­lar dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, but rather at­tack rapid­ly di­vid­ing cells like chemother­a­py, or they fo­cus on tar­get­ing path­ways that af­fect pro­lif­er­a­tion and tu­mor growth,” she said. “Our ap­proach is to tar­get al­tered dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion path­ways to push pa­tients in­to long-term durable treat­ment re­spons­es. We think this opens up an un­tapped op­por­tu­ni­ty to bring nov­el ther­a­pies to pa­tients.”

The round was led by DCVC Bio with sup­port from new in­vestors Mubadala Cap­i­tal and Apol­lo Health Ven­tures. Ex­ist­ing in­vestors who par­tic­i­pat­ed in­clude Arkin Bio Ven­tures, Po­laris Part­ners, Qim­ing Ven­ture Part­ners USA, Eli Lil­ly, the Amer­i­can Can­cer So­ci­ety’s in­vest­ment arm Bright­Edge, Franklin Berg­er and Cas­din Cap­i­tal.

Rising monkeypox cases have put the US on high alert as it announces a national health emergency, which grants the government more power in its response.

The news comes as Bavarian Nordic continues to fill orders for its Jynneos vaccine and other companies – including Moderna – consider jumping into the vaccine race. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that the US has allowed around 20 million doses of smallpox vaccine in its stockpile to expire.

Forget buyer’s remorse, Pfizer is likely feeling pretty good about its $11.6 billion Biohaven takeover deal following reports of a 57% sales boost for migraine med Nurtec.

Biohaven reported in Q2 results on Friday that it’s cleared the necessary antitrust hurdles to move forward with the sale of its calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) assets to Pfizer. However, because the company is “focused on workstreams related to the closing” of the deal, it did not host a call with analysts and investors.