Ceremorphic forays into life sciences sector

Hyderabad: Ceremorphic Inc, a US-based fabless silicon and system development company, has announced its foray into life sciences sector through its subsidiary – Ceremorphic Life Sciences. The new division is likely to address the challenges in pharmaceutical industry while developing new drugs, Dr Venkat Mattela, Founder & CEO of the company, told Bizz Buzz.

He said, “The new drug development has been hampered by inefficiency in the design pipeline resulting in increased costs, longer development time and poor efficacy. Over 90 per cent new drugs fail at clinical phase II and very few of them clear the USFDA every year. This emphasises the urgency of the situation and calls for a new development methodology in the early stages of the design pipeline.”

“Accurate AI foundation models, new novel algorithms and relevant data are critical to producing successful later stage results. Utilising its proprietary analog circuit technology, supercomputing chips and novel AI algorithms, Ceremorphic has developed an In Silico architecture that can predict the later stage outcomes to increase R&D efficiency,” Venkat informed.

“Our innovation will transform the future of drug discovery to accelerate making personalised medicine a reality. We have initiated working on this after reading a journal of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on ‘Analog Computing’ in 2016. For more than six years, we have spent over $20 million to do extensive research and owned over 20 analog computing patents,” he claimed.

To continue their research and bring their product into the global markets, the company wants to raise funding of over $100 million in two tranches. As it plans to launch their product by the end of next year, it is expecting to raise $50 million before mid-2024 and another $50 million by 2025 to further scale up the production.

The CEO exudes confidence in their upcoming product which consists of software/ artificial intelligence (AI) technology, a board and a chip. Ceremorphic team has deep expertise and patented technology to design and develop computing chips. The yet-to-be-named innovation will be assembled by a third-party manufacturer and the prototype is anticipated by this December.

When asked about its cost, Venkat says: “It is too early to speak on that. Though its price would be a few millions of dollars, the pharma research companies are likely to save more than $1 billion through it during clinical trials over a period of time. Oncology and neurology are the main focus areas. We may go for the USFDA approval for our product by 2025-26.”

Speaking about his team, he adds: “Ceremorphic currently employs 160 people at Hyderabad Development Centre and plans to make the overall headcount to 200 by the end of 2024. We have 35 people working in the R&D team of Life Sciences Division and six out of them are biologists. We will be doubling this number within a year.”

Ceremorphic’s India Development center was established in Hyderabad this January. The company was founded in April 2020. Earlier, Venkat had founded Redpine Signals, which was sold to Silicon Labs Inc in March 2020 for $308 million. Under his leadership, Redpine had delivered many breakthrough innovations and industry-first products.