Meliora Therapeutics to Build Oncology Drug Mechanism of Action Atlas with $11M Seed Financing

Year-old biotech company Meliora Therapeutics announced on Thursday it has raised $11 million in a seed financing round that will fund further development of its machine learning platform that will seek to catalog and detail the exact mechanisms of action (MOA) of existing oncology drugs. The financing round was led by HOF Capital and ZhenFund, with participation from Obvious Ventures, Village Global, BrightEdge, Pebblebed, Axial, Olive Capital, and individual investors Michael Polansky, Wes Sterman, among others.

According to a press release announcing the financing, Meliora aims to improve the approval rate of cancer drugs in development—currently only about three percent—by understanding of their true mechanisms of action via application of its machine-learning platforms to more precisely...