MA-ANIMOL-DISCOVERY
28.7.2022 13:09:06 CEST | Business Wire | Press release
Animol Discovery, Inc., a pioneer in veterinary pharmaceutical discovery, today announced it has raised $34.0 million in Series B financing. The investment was led by Novalis Lifesciences, with participation from Finistere Ventures and existing investor Anterra Capital. The proceeds allow the company to expand and advance its pipeline of novel active pharmaceutical ingredients through clinical development and further enhance its cutting-edge drug discovery platform.
The $40Bn animal health industry continues to demand novel medicines to treat infectious and chronic diseases in companion and production animals. Recent successes, such as Apoquel™ from Zoetis and Nexguard™ from Boehringer Ingelheim, demonstrate the potential to build towards blockbuster franchises in the sector with novel pharmaceutical products.
“Pet parents and livestock farmers continue to demand novel veterinary pharmaceuticals that can protect animals against diseases and improve quality of life,” said Andrew Plant PhD, chief executive officer, Animol Discovery. “Despite this strong demand, innovation is lagging. At Animol, we seek to address this innovation gap by leveraging the most advanced tools from human pharma to bring forward a wealth of new medicines that can benefit animals and the people who care for them.”
Founded in 2020 and incubated by Anterra Capital, Animol is pioneering the use of DNA Encoded Library (DEL) drug discovery technology coupled with powerful machine learning approaches to enable the rapid discovery of novel veterinary medicines.
“We have built Animol on the same cutting edge discovery techniques that we are using to disrupt drug discovery in human pharma (ZebiAI - acquired by Relay Therapeutics) and crop protection (Enko Chem),” said Philip Austin, Managing Partner at Anterra Capital. “Translating these tools to the massive opportunity available in veterinary pharma was the next obvious step and we are already seeing their use successfully build into a rich pipeline of promising compounds.”
Animol also announced that Marijn Dekkers PhD, founder & chairman of Novalis LifeSciences LLC will join the Board of Directors. Dr. Dekkers formerly served as the CEO of Bayer AG, and as the CEO of Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc. At Bayer he oversaw one of the largest global animal health companies.
“Most current medicines in the $40B veterinary pharma market are derived from drugs that have been originally developed for humans. There is of course nothing wrong with that, but there are many animal-specific diseases that require a targeted effort. I like Animol Discovery’s approach to use its breakthrough drug discovery platform to specifically address significant unmet needs in animals. I am looking forward to working with the team to optimize the opportunity ahead,” said Dr. Dekkers.
“It is a great pleasure to be able to welcome Marijn Dekkers to our Board of Directors. Dr. Dekkers is an exceptional industry leader with a track record of turning innovation into successful businesses across the spectrum of life sciences, including in animal health,” said Andrew Plant PhD, chief executive officer, Animol Discovery. “He is an excellent addition to our team of experienced industry leaders.”
“I am also delighted to bring Doug Hutchens on board as chief scientific officer. Dr. Hutchens brings a wealth of industry experience in animal health research and product development; having someone who has also served as Chief Veterinary Officer within a major animal health company brings huge value to our expanding team,” added Dr. Plant.
“I am thrilled by the prospect of joining Animol’s dynamic and experienced team as chief scientific officer,” said Doug Hutchens, DVM, PhD. “The company’s ability to interrogate protein targets with billions of DNA-tagged molecules and, using DNA sequencing, identify selective inhibitors from numerous diverse chemical families is game changing in animal health drug discovery. Leveraging these data with proprietary, highly predictive machine learning algorithms, is enabling the identification of novel drug-like compounds in a matter of weeks from the initial DEL screen. This technology platform greatly expands the opportunities, significantly increases the probability, and accelerates the timeline in developing new classes of therapeutic molecules.”
About Animol
Animol is a pioneer in using state of the art drug discovery technology to discover small molecule active pharmaceutical ingredients to transform standards of care in veterinary medicine. The company is reducing the time and cost to discover novel active ingredients utilizing DNA-encoded libraries, machine learning/AI and structure-based design.
Animol is a private company based in Boston, Massachusetts. For more information see www.Animol-discovery.com
About Novalis LifeSciences LLC
Novalis LifeSciences LLC is an investment and advisory firm for the Life Science industry that was founded in 2017 by Marijn E. Dekkers. With a team of experienced operating executives from the Life Science industry, Novalis funds and advises visionary Life Science entrepreneurs. In addition to making financial investments, Novalis provides strategic and operational advice to portfolio companies that are at a critical growth stage in their development. For more information, visit www.novalislifesciences.com
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220728005186/en/
About Business Wire
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Sensereo Airo Wins IFA Berlin Innovation Award8.9.2026 17:00:00 CEST | Press release
Prestigious Accolade Recognizes Sensereo’s Next-Generation Approach to Creating Healthier, Smarter Indoor Environments Sensereo, an environmental intelligence company developing next-generation sensing products for safer, healthier and smarter living, was presented with the prestigious IFA Berlin Innovation Award for its Airo modular indoor air quality system. The award was presented during IFA Berlin on Thursday, Sept. 4, recognizing Airo for its innovative approach to helping consumers better understand and manage the quality of their indoor environments. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260906292649/en/ Winner of a 2026 IFA Innovation Award, Airo is Sensereo’s flagship environmental intelligence platform, combining advanced sensing technology with a modular design that allows users to monitor multiple aspects of indoor air quality and environmental conditions through a single, consumer-friendly system. Desig
Verdantis Rebrands as the AI Super-Agent for MRO, Sets Sights on AI-Native Enterprise Asset Management8.9.2026 16:06:00 CEST | Press release
Nine AI agents now run the MRO decision chain for Fortune 500 plants; new tagline “Anticipate. Resolve. Learn.” Verdantis, the AI company for spare parts and MRO inventory optimization in asset-intensive industries, today unveiled its new brand identity as the AI Super-agent for MRO and announced it is building toward a fully AI-native Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) platform. Verdantis’s super-agent orchestrates nine specialized AI agents across the decisions that decide plant uptime: spare parts, criticality, demand, reorder, and work order planning. These decisions set working capital, maintenance spend, and whether a critical asset runs and, in most plants, they are still made in spreadsheets and disconnected systems. The positioning is for the teams who own uptime - maintenance, reliability, and MRO supply chain leaders in oil and gas, mining, utilities, chemicals, and manufacturing. And it reflects an AI-first architecture: agents decide and act by default; people supervise, ov
HyperLight Welcomes VentureTech Alliance to Series C, Deepening TFLN Integration Across the Semiconductor Ecosystem8.9.2026 16:00:00 CEST | Press release
HyperLight Corporation ("HyperLight"), a leader in thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) photonics, today announced that VentureTech Alliance ("VTA") has joined its Series C financing round. VTA is a venture investment firm focused on the semiconductor industry, with a portfolio built across the semiconductor technology stack — including circuit design, foundry-adjacent process technology, EDA, advanced packaging, and photonics. VTA's participation extends the ecosystem alignment that defined the round, which brought together investors spanning silicon ICs, foundry manufacturing, electronics manufacturing services, networking, and global infrastructure capital. With VTA's addition, the syndicate now reaches further into the semiconductor manufacturing and design-enablement layers on which high-volume photonics production depends. "The transition to TFLN is not a component decision — it is an ecosystem decision," said Mian Zhang, CEO of HyperLight. "Getting TFLN into volume requires the proc
EcoOnline Appoints Conor O’Loughlin as CEO8.9.2026 16:00:00 CEST | Press release
O’Loughlin brings founder, product and commercial experience spanning startup growth, global SaaS scale and M&A EcoOnline, a global provider of software that transforms how organisations protect people and the planet, today announced the appointment of Conor O’Loughlin as Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. O’Loughlin succeeds Tom Goodmanson and will lead the Company into its next chapter of growth and innovation, continuing EcoOnline’s mission of keeping employees safe across the globe and supporting more than 11,000 customers. O’Loughlin is an experienced, growth-oriented technology operator and founder. He co-founded fitness technology company Glofox, scaling it into a global SaaS business serving customers in more than 80 countries before its acquisition by ABC Fitness in 2022. Following the acquisition, he served as Platform President and later Global Chief Revenue Officer at ABC Fitness, leading strategy across the company’s revenue-generating activities. “Keeping peo
Hawker Operators Gain Access to High-Speed Starlink Connectivity Through Textron Aviation Customer Support Network8.9.2026 16:00:00 CEST | Press release
Textron Aviation Inc., a Textron Inc. (NYSE: TXT) company, today announced Starlink’s high-speed internet is now available for the Hawker 700, 800 and 900 series aircraft, following the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) issuance of AeroMech’s Supplemental Type Certificate (STC). The STC includes the Starlink Aviation Performance Kit, which utilizes Starlink’s advanced constellation of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites to help customers stay connected throughout their journey with more reliability over land, water and remote areas, where traditional in-flight Wi-Fi may not have service. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260908170569/en/ Hawker operators gain access to high-speed Starlink connectivity through Textron Aviation Customer Support network “Hawker operators continue to look to Textron Aviation for long-term care and upgrade solutions that ensure their aircraft remain mission-ready in today’s operat
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom