ProFound, Gates Foundation partner to identify preeclampsia drug targets

ProFound Therapeutics is partnering with the Gates Foundation to identify drug targets for preeclampsia.

According to Fierce Biotech on the 27th local time, ProFound Therapeutics, a Flagship Pioneering company, signed a collaboration agreement worth up to $35 million with the Gates Foundation.

ProFound will initially receive $20 million and secure an additional $15 million upon achieving certain experimental milestones.

The company plans to use its proteomics data to identify biomarkers and drug targets for preeclampsia in placental tissue.

Preeclampsia is a condition characterized by high blood pressure during pregnancy and can result in the death of the mother or fetus if not appropriately treated.

John Lepore, ProFound's chief executive officer, said, "It is a very important cause of maternal and fetal deaths, particularly in developing countries where there are no opportunities for acute-phase treatment," adding, "The Gates Foundation has a strong interest in improving this terrible situation."

ProFound has been building a library of so-called "dark proteome" proteins that cannot be detected using traditional techniques.

The company plans to comparatively analyze placentas from women with and without preeclampsia to identify areas with potential for future drug development.

Once a target is identified, its function will be estimated using agentic artificial intelligence tools, followed by laboratory validation.

Herbert Virgin, head of the Gates Foundation's AI-based Therapeutics Frontier Accelerator, said, "Only about 1% of global health care research and development (R&D) is devoted to female-specific diseases other than cancer," adding, "It can take more than 10 years for promising treatments to reach the women who need them."

The collaboration began with a conversation between CEO Lepore and Virgin about a year ago.

The two confirmed that ProFound's platform and the foundation's AI approach were complementary and selected preeclampsia as the initial focus because of its substantial unmet need and the relative ease of obtaining research tissue.

Founded in 2022, ProFound has partnerships with Novartis, Pfizer and GSK.

CEO Lepore explained, "The core of the strategy is to focus on areas where we can perform well internally and complement that through collaborations with pharmaceutical companies or, as in this case, foundations."

The company's internal pipeline is focused primarily on oncology, and CEO Lepore added that it has identified a new class of proteins that exist only in cancer and can be targeted.