Antiverse

Antiverse is a Cardiff and Boston-based techbio company on a mission to make previously undruggable protein targets accessible to modern therapeutics. The company was founded in 2017 by Murat Tunaboylu and Ben Holland with the insight that conventional antibody discovery methods — including B-cell screening and synthetic library generation — were fundamentally ill-suited to the most challenging and clinically important targets, particularly G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and ion channels. Despite representing a third of all FDA-approved drug targets, GPCRs have yielded only three approved antibody therapies, highlighting the magnitude of the problem that Antiverse is working to solve.

Antiverse's platform integrates generative AI and machine learning with in-house wet lab infrastructure to design antibodies de novo for difficult targets. Rather than screening random libraries, the platform uses structural and sequence data to generate 'target-specific libraries' — collections of antibody sequences with high predictive accuracy against a precise target epitope. This rational design approach compresses discovery timelines from several years to under six months, and positions the company's assets with significantly improved likelihood of clinical success compared to conventional methods.

Since its founding, Antiverse has raised over $20 million in total capital, including a £3.5 million seed extension in 2024 and a $9.3 million Series A in early 2025. The company has forged strategic partnerships with Nxera Pharma to discover antibodies for multiple GPCR targets, and signed a research agreement with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to explore nanobody design for previously undruggable CFTR-related targets. Antiverse is now progressing its first wholly owned candidates toward later-stage preclinical development, while continuing to support pharmaceutical partners with discovery programmes.