Formation Bio, a startup focused on applying AI to drug discovery with backing from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, has raised over a quarter-billion dollars to support its ambitious product roadmap.

Formation Bio是一家专注于将人工智能应用于药物发现的初创公司，得到了OpenAI首席执行官萨姆·奥特曼的支持，已筹集了25多亿美元用于支持其雄心勃勃的产品路线图。

Formation today announced that it raised $372 million in a Series D funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from drugmaker Sanofi, Sequoia, Thrive, Emerson Collective, Lachy Groom, SV Angel Growth and FPV Ventures. The new tranche brings Formation’s total raised to $528 million, which the company says is being put mainly toward partnership acquisition efforts and R&D..

今天，Formation宣布，它在安德烈森·霍洛维茨（AndreessenHorowitz）领导的D系列融资回合中筹集了3.72亿美元，制药商赛诺菲（Sanofi）、红杉（Sequoia）、Thrive、艾默生（Emerson Collective）、莱希·格罗姆（Lachy Groom）、SV Angel Growth和FPV Ventures参与了这轮融资。新的部分使Formation的总筹资额达到5.28亿美元，该公司表示，这笔资金主要用于合伙企业收购和研发。。

Formation declined to reveal its new valuation. But a spokesperson told TechCrunch that it’s a “material step up” from $1 billion, Formation’s Series C valuation.

该集团拒绝透露其新的估值。但一位发言人告诉TechCrunch，这是对Formation C系列10亿美元估值的“重大提升”。

Formation, which previously went by the brand TrialSpark, was co-founded by Benjamine Liu and Linhao Zhang in 2016. Liu has a background in computational biology, having conducted neuroscience research at Oxford and UPenn. Zhang is a software developer by trade and worked at Salesforce before joining Oscar Insurance as a product engineer..

之前由TrialSpark品牌创立的Formation由刘本杰明（Benjamine Liu）和张林浩（Linhao Zhang）于2016年共同创立。刘拥有计算生物学背景，曾在牛津大学和UPenn大学进行过神经科学研究。张是一名软件开发人员，曾在Salesforce工作，后来加入奥斯卡保险公司担任产品工程师。。

Formation builds tech-forward solutions for clinical trials and drug development. The company licenses drug IP from and co-develops drugs with biotech and pharma companies, and develops these drugs past clinical proof-of-concept.

该团队为临床试验和药物开发构建了技术前沿解决方案。该公司从生物技术和制药公司获得药物知识产权许可，并与生物技术和制药公司共同开发药物，并通过临床概念验证开发这些药物。

Drug development is a notoriously expensive — and challenging — endeavor. It takes 10-15 years on average to take a drug from initial discovery through regulatory approval, with the cost per drug reaching up to $5.5 billion. And an estimated 90% of drugs fail to reach the market.

药物开发是一项众所周知的昂贵且具有挑战性的工作。从最初的发现到监管部门的批准，服用一种药物平均需要10-15年，每种药物的成本高达55亿美元。估计有90%的药物无法进入市场。

Formation claims it’s able to run clinical trials more efficiently by streamlining processes such as study startup, participant recruitment and data management. For example, the company is currently deploying AI to generate patient recruitment materials and reports for “adverse events.” It’s also fine-tuning AI models to provide drug development teams recommendations for R&D decisions and better predict drug toxicity, tolerability and efficacy..

Formation声称，通过简化研究启动、参与者招募和数据管理等流程，它能够更有效地进行临床试验。例如，该公司目前正在部署人工智能来生成患者招募材料和“不良事件”报告。它还微调人工智能模型，为药物开发团队提供研发决策建议，并更好地预测药物毒性、耐受性和疗效。。

Last month, Formation announced a collaboration with OpenAI and Sanofi to jointly design and develop customized AI solutions for drug development. OpenAI said it would contribute access to AI capabilities and expertise, while Sanofi said it would bring proprietary data for developing AI models.

上月，Formation宣布与OpenAI和赛诺菲合作，共同设计和开发用于药物开发的定制AI解决方案。OpenAI表示，它将有助于获得人工智能功能和专业知识，而赛诺菲表示，它将为开发人工智能模型带来专有数据。

OpenAI’s involvement gives the appearance of conflict of interest, given that Altman was involved in Formation’s Series C fundraising; we’ve reached out to OpenAI for more information and will update this post if we hear back.

鉴于奥特曼参与了Formation的C系列筹款活动，OpenAI的参与似乎产生了利益冲突；我们已经联系了OpenAI获取更多信息，如果我们得到回复，我们将更新这篇文章。

“At Sanofi, we’re all in on AI,” Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson said in a press release. “And we are proud to partner with and invest in Formation Bio, whose AI-driven drug development vision and capabilities will help lead our industry forward in the shared ambition to accelerate and improve how we bring more new medicines to patients.”.

赛诺菲首席执行官保罗·哈德森（PaulHudson）在新闻稿中表示：“在赛诺菲，我们都支持人工智能。”。“我们很自豪能与Formation Bio合作并投资，Formation Bio的人工智能驱动的药物开发愿景和能力将有助于引领我们的行业向前发展，实现加速和改进我们为患者带来更多新药的共同目标。”。

Formation has three drug candidates in its clinical pipeline, including treatments for chronic hand eczema, sensory neuropathy and knee osteoarthritis. The furthest along is the eczema treatment, which recently reached phase 3 — the last stage of testing before a drug is submitted to regulatory authorities..

Formation在临床上有三种候选药物，包括治疗慢性手部湿疹、感觉神经病和膝关节骨性关节炎。最远的是湿疹治疗，它最近达到了第三阶段-药物提交给监管机构之前的最后一个测试阶段。。

A number of startups are attempting to pioneer AI-powered tech for drug discovery, including EvolutionaryScale, which emerged from stealth this week with investments from Amazon and Nvidia. Major players include Xaira (which launched with $1 billion), DeepMind spin-off Isomorphic, Insilico, Jeff Dean-backed Profluent, Enveda and Causaly.

许多初创公司正试图开创人工智能驱动的药物发现技术，包括进化规模（EvolutionaryScale），该技术本周在亚马逊（Amazon）和英伟达（Nvidia）的投资下从隐形技术中诞生。主要参与者包括Xaira（以10亿美元发行）、DeepMind衍生的Isomorphic、Insilico、Jeff Dean-backed Profluent、Enveda和Causaly。

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