CRO

Schrödinger secures $85M in financing toward growing drug discovery platform

Schrödinger, a New York-based drug discovery company that uses advanced molecular simulations, has snared $85 million in financing to support its computational platform and expand its pipeline.

The latest round of funding was co-led by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Trust and WuXi AppTec’s Corporate Venture Fund. Also joining in the round of financing was Deerfield Management, Baron, Qiming Venture Partners and GV, formerly Google Ventures.

The company added that it plans to hire more scientists and developers as it expands its drug discovery teams working on potential new compounds directed at a range of indications.

“The investment will allow us to continue to advance our technology platform to help our users accelerate their work in life sciences and materials design,” Ramy Farid, Ph.D., the company’s chief executive, said in a statement. “We are also excited to expand our drug discovery efforts, leveraging our platform to grow our pipeline and discover new medicines more efficiently.”

In October, Schrödinger and WuXi AppTec unveiled a joint venture dubbed Faxian Therapeutics, which uses the company’s drug discovery platform to identify new targets and create new drugs that will move through WuXi’s CRO services.

Schrödinger is also in partnerships with Takeda and Sanofi. Other companies it has co-founded include Nimbus Therapeutics and Morphic Therapeutic.