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A startup that's bringing together 'two disparate but unstoppable trends' just raised $400 million from investors led by SoftBank

Dec 20, 2018, 17:30 IST

Relay Therapeutics CEO Sanjiv PatelRelay Therapeutics

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  • Relay Therapeutics just raised $400 million in a round led by SoftBank's Vision Fund.
  • The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup is using computation tools to get a better sense of how proteins look while they're moving.
  • The plan is to use the funding to move research along in development toward human trials, as well as expand the approach to other diseases.

A startup that's trying to come up with a better way to view the motion of proteins to develop better drugs just raised a massive round to close out 2018.

On Thursday, Relay Therapeutics said it had raised $400 million in a series C round led by SoftBank's Vision Fund, with Foresite Capital, Perceptive Advisors, and Tavistock Group joining in for the first time. Existing investors including GV, BVF Partners, and Casdin Capital also put up money. Relay has now raised a total of $520 million.

Relay, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup is using computation tools to get a better sense of how proteins look while they're moving. Proteins, especially those that are mutated, play a critical role in conditions like cancer.

The hope is that by evaluating how the proteins move in their "natural state" - as opposed to the way the protein is structured in a static moment - the company will be able to find cancer treatments that have otherwise been elusive.

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"This company sounded like it was sitting on two disparate but unstoppable trends," Relay CEO Sanjiv Patel told Business Insider in August about his decision to join the company in 2017.

Read more: The former head of strategy at Allergan explains why he joined a startup that's bringing together 'two disparate but unstoppable trends'

Founded in 2016, Relay's still in the early stages of drug development, but plans to spend 2019 determining which programs to move into human trials, as well as expand its approach into other disease areas.

Having investors like Japanese tech giant SoftBank's $92 billion Vision Fund, which has made investments in quickly-scaling companies like Uber and WeWork, made sense at this point.

"They can bring experience building companies at the scale and level of disruption," Patel told Business Insider in December.

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It's not the first time Softbank has made a big bet on biotech. On December 13, SoftBank's Vision Fund led a $400 million round for Silicon Valley-based synthetic biology startup Zymergen. In August 2017, Vision Fund also led a $1.1 billion round for Roivant, a company working to give old drugs new lives.

"Not every biotech company does it make sense to finance in this manner," Third Rock Ventures partner and Relay chairman Alexis Borisy told Business Insider in December. "You really need to have something with the scale of applicability."

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