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Achilles Therapeutics

Patient-specific cancer therapies

Achilles Therapeutics logo
201-500 employees
  • Healthcare
  • B2B
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Biology
  • Science
  • MedTech
Hammersmith, London, UK

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Company mission

To exploit cancer’s Achilles heel, allowing precision treatments that destroy tumours without harming healthy tissues.

Our take

One way that medicine is developed to fight cancer is to target neoantigens (mutated proteins on the surface of cancer cells) with immunotherapies that will selectively attack the cancer cells. The challenge with this type of treatment comes in identifying a neoantigen that all the cancerous shells share – the one that was developed early on, when the first cells became cancerous.

Achilles Therapeutics has developed an AI-powered bioinformatics platform called PELEUS™ that is able to identify these shared “clonal” neoantigens from a patient’s unique tumor profile. The platform was developed and validated with data from the landmark TRACERx study. This study generated one of the largest data sets ever collected to analyse tumor evolution, and over which Achilles has exclusive commercial rights.

As well as its breakthrough platform, Achilles Therapeutics also delivers a follow-up procedure to generate the patient-specific T-cells that are tailored to the neoantigens discovered by PELEUS™. Through 2022, the company ramped up its R&D, and secured a US patent for its tech with a promising proof-of-concept to boot. Moving forward, it will continue development of the platform as it takes its system to the next stage of trials.

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Kirsty

Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle

Benefits

  • Optional private medical insurance including optical and dental
  • Matched pension contributions
  • Share incentive plan
  • Life assurance
  • Employee Assistance Program
  • Coffee & fresh fruit

Funding (last 2 of 4 rounds)

Jul 2022

$4.3m

GRANT

Nov 2020

$62.1m

SERIES C

Total funding: $199m

Leadership

Iraj Ali

(CEO, not founder)

Earned a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge. Former Managing Partner at Syncona Investment Management Limited, Member of the Board at Blue Earth Diagnostics.