Eagle Genomics raises $20m but guns for a further $10m

Cambridge-based Eagle Genomics, a pioneering TechBio platform business applying network science to biology, has raised a $20 million first close of its scale-up funding round but is hoping to raise half as much again.

The company says the round will remain open for an unspecified further period to facilitate more investment up to an additional $10 million.

Whatever the eventual tally, the round will support further development of Eagle’s e[datascientist]™  platform and continue to drive expansion into global markets and the deepening of client impact.

The round is being led by abrdn plc with continued participation from existing investors Environmental Technologies Fund and a consortium of backers headed by Granpool Innovative Investments. 

Eagle Genomics continues to grow as a leading TechBio company pioneering the application of network science to biological discovery and innovation, across the Food and Nutrition, AgBio, Beauty & Personal Care, and Biopharma industries. 

The e[datascientist] platform enables enterprise customers to trace digital journeys in data, driving transformative innovations, exploiting leading-edge scientific discovery in silico and supporting differentiated product claims.

The vision is to accelerate the Bioeconomy through the digital reinvention of life sciences R & D. Eagle says it is increasingly focused on supporting its customers' aspirations as they address ‘One Health’ challenges towards more sustainable and impact-oriented innovation and product outcomes. 

The concept of ‘One Health’ recognises that the health of humans, animals, and the environment are intimately interconnected and that the application of technologies to solve in one domain can inspire and enable advances in others. 

Addressing the ‘One Health’ opportunity requires a focus on and deep understanding of microbiome and host-microbiome interactions as the common denominator across these domains.

Eagle Genomics is regarded as the pre-eminent platform business using next-generation graph technology and network science to drive the Bioeconomy. The business problem the platform solves for customers is to network their scientific data to support step-change innovation – e.g., understanding new key bio-active ingredients that could deliver health benefits, or targeting a particular health benefit and working backwards through data to identify key ingredients. 

The technical challenge that Eagle Genomics is solving is to bridge the ‘translation gap,’ so that scientific knowledge from a range of disparate sources and studies across industries can be applied to deliver robust, scientifically underpinned product claims.

Particular innovation journeys that enable differentiated products and product claims include:-

• Food and Nutrition: Personalised and functional nutrition; e.g., energy balance, feed efficiency, growth rate, botanicals, food as medicine, precision fermentation, alternative proteins and ingredient design and differentiation.
• Beauty and Personal Care: Personalised/stratified cosmetics; e.g., skin, oral, scalp, pre/pro/postbiotics, ingredient manufacturing, cosmeceuticals, and genital health/personal hygiene products.
• AgBio: Biofertilizers, microbiome engineering, bioavailability, crops (yield increase, protection, fertility, productivity, climate adaptation/change mitigation), soil treatment, and smart agriculture.
• BioPharma: Microbiome therapeutics, anti-microbial resistance, personalised/stratified medicine, therapeutics for gastrointestinal and infectious diseases, immuno-oncology/autoimmune disease and metabolic health.

Anthony Finbow, CEO of Eagle Genomics, said: “We are seeking to support our enterprise customers as they strive to achieve more sustainable and impact-orientated innovation outcomes. The current scale-up funding will enable us to accelerate the Bioeconomy through the digital reinvention of science.”

Alistair Watson, head of Strategy Innovation – Private Equity, abrdn, added: “We believe that Eagle Genomics is poised to support increasing numbers of large enterprise customers with digitising R & D and product innovation activities.

“This investment will support Eagle Genomics’ scale-up while driving further penetration into global markets. It is also pivotal for the wider Bioeconomy, as the importance of microbiome science increases and its applications become more widespread.”