London-based biotech startup Ternary Therapeutics has secured £3.6 million in seed funding to accelerate the development of its artificial intelligence-based platform to create a new class of drugs called molecular glues.
The funding round was led by European venture capital firm daphni, with participation from Pace Ventures, i&i Biotech Fund and the UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund, managed by Future Planet Capital. The investment will support the expansion of Ternary’s AI platform, research team and early drug development programs.
Ternary Therapeutics was founded in November 2024 and is headquartered in London. It is developing a technology platform that combines machine learning, physics-based molecular modeling and rapid laboratory validation to develop molecular glues – a promising but still emerging category of drugs that can target proteins previously considered untreatable.
Unlike traditional drugs, which typically work by binding directly to a target protein and inhibiting its function, molecular glues work by bringing two proteins together to trigger the destruction or alteration of disease-causing proteins. This mechanism has become one of the most exciting areas of drug discovery in recent years, particularly in areas such as cancer, autoimmune diseases and neurological diseases.
However, most of the molecular adhesives discovered so far have arisen largely by chance as part of broader drug discovery programs rather than by conscious design. Ternary aims to change this dynamic by applying computational methods and artificial intelligence to transform the discovery of molecular adhesives into a systematic engineering process.
The company’s platform uses AI models to predict the behavior of proteins in the body and identify potential molecules that can bind them together. These candidate molecules are then tested experimentally in the laboratory, with the results fed back into the system to improve the predictive accuracy of the models.
By repeating this cycle of computational prediction and experimental validation, Ternary hopes to dramatically accelerate new drug discovery and unlock drug targets that have been inaccessible to traditional pharmaceutical approaches in the past.
Dr. Chris Tame, co-founder and chief executive of Ternary Therapeutics, said the company’s goal is to transform molecular adhesive discovery from a matter of luck into a scalable design discipline.
“Molecular adhesives have led to some of the most exciting breakthroughs in drug discovery in the last decade, but historically they were discovered largely by chance rather than through a systematic process,” he said.
“Our platform is designed to change this by combining physics-based AI with rapid experimental validation to develop these molecules in a targeted manner at scale. This allows us to approach drug discovery like an engineering problem rather than a trial and error process.”
Tame said the new capital would allow the company to expand its computing infrastructure, expand its scientific team and advance its most promising programs towards preclinical development, while laying the foundation for partnerships with global pharmaceutical companies.
The company has already developed an early pipeline of programs focused on inflammatory and neuroinflammatory diseases and established research collaborations with several biotechnology and pharmaceutical partners.
Investors believe the technology could help unlock significant new frontiers in drug discovery.
Cristian Pinto, an investor at daphni, said the development of molecular adhesives predictably represents one of the most complex scientific challenges in modern medicine.
“Ternary has built a disciplined platform that integrates machine learning, physics and experimental biology to address this challenge,” he said.
The investment also reflects growing momentum in the biotechnology sector around targeted protein degradation, an approach that aims to eliminate disease-causing proteins rather than simply blocking their activity.
Oliver Sexton, investment director at the UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund, said advances in artificial intelligence and computing power are enabling researchers to understand biological systems far more precisely than ever before.
“Ternary’s approach to drug development is enabled by its computing power,” he said. “The combination of growing biological knowledge and recent developments in AI makes it possible to understand the enormous complexity and develop molecular drug candidates that target areas that were historically considered unreachable.”
A large proportion of proteins involved in human diseases lack obvious drug binding sites, limiting the effectiveness of traditional drug development approaches. Molecular adhesives offer an alternative route by creating entirely new interactions between proteins within cells.
If platforms like Ternary’s can make these interactions reliable, they could significantly increase the number of treatable diseases and open important new opportunities for collaboration between biotech startups and big pharma.
The investment in Ternary comes amid growing global interest in AI-driven drug discovery, as advances in machine learning and structural biology transform the economics and speed of pharmaceutical research.
Now that it has secured fresh capital, the company plans to accelerate the development of its platform while bringing its first therapeutic candidates to clinical maturity.
