Undecimal Bio raises $18 million Seed to tackle a key obstacle in RNA medicines
The spinout from Eleven Therapeutics is developing an AI-enabled platform designed to deliver gene-silencing medicines to specific cells beyond the liver, where RNA-based treatments have had their greatest success.
RNA-based medicines have opened new possibilities for treating disease by targeting the genetic instructions that drive it. However, a fundamental challenge remains, getting these medicines to the right cells in the body. Undecimal Bio, a biotechnology company spun out of Eleven Therapeutics, is seeking to address that problem with an AI-enabled platform, backed by an $18 million Seed round.
The financing was co-led by 4BIO Capital and IQ Capital, with participation from Verve Ventures, Harel Tech, Entrée Capital, Kerna Ventures and Saras Capital. The company plans to use the funds to advance its delivery platform, develop its initial programs targeting renovascular diseases and expand its team at laboratories based at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute.
The underlying challenge is central to the broader potential of RNA interference, or RNAi, a biological process that can be harnessed to silence specific genes. Although RNAi medicines have transformed treatment for some diseases involving the liver, delivering them to other tissues remains a significant obstacle. A medicine may be designed to silence the right gene, but its effectiveness depends on reaching the cells where that gene is active.
Undecimal's platform, called DELiveri, is designed to identify molecules that can carry small interfering RNA, or siRNA, into specific cell types. Rather than relying on a limited set of candidate delivery molecules, the company says it screens large combinatorial libraries and uses the resulting data to identify which molecular structures are most effective at delivering RNA into target cells.
The platform uses cells as a kind of molecular detection system, measuring delivery at single-molecule resolution. Agentic AI systems then analyze the resulting data to identify relationships between a molecule's structure and its ability to deliver RNA. The goal is to make the search for effective delivery molecules faster and more systematic.
Undecimal's formation follows a broader effort to develop RNA therapeutics at Eleven Therapeutics. In 2022, Eleven raised $22 million in Seed financing, including support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to develop small interfering RNA medicines using AI and combinatorial chemistry. The company's work included efforts to design RNA molecules with longer-lasting effects.
The new company is led by co-founders Dr. Yaniv Erlich and Shaul Ilan. Its board includes representatives of 4BIO Capital, IQ Capital and Harel Technologies, while Verve Ventures has joined as a board observer.
“The hard problem in RNAi was never the silencing, it was getting the molecule to the right cell,” Erlich, Undecimal's CEO and co-founder, said in the announcement.
He said DELiveri can screen large chemical spaces and generate data for AI agents to analyze, with the aim of identifying promising candidates for the next generation of siRNA therapeutics.
