These days it’s nearly impossible to turn around in the biopharma world without hearing about how some company is going to use machine learning to revolutionize drug development. “It really is a catchphrase,” acknowledged Jo Viney, whose latest startup, Seismic Therapeutic Inc. launched with a $101 million series A round to advance a platform incorporating machine learning capabilities to find new drugs for autoimmune diseases.

Congruence Therapeutics Inc. has closed on a $50 million series A financing to design small molecules to treat rare diseases with protein misfolding. Montreal-based Congruence uses structural bioinformatics, computational chemistry and machine learning in its in silico platform that detects key biophysical features on proteins. That data are used to then design drugs.

Endeavor Biomedicines Inc.’s $101 million series B round will let the firm forge ahead with ENV-101 (taladegib), a small-molecule inhibitor of the PTCH1 receptor in the Hedgehog signaling pathway, for cancer and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), as well as ENV-201, described as a potentially best-in-class small-molecule inhibitor of ULK1/2 in KRAS-driven cancers.

The amount of money raised in January by biopharma companies has fallen 55% from the same month in 2021 and 31% from January of 2020, indicating less enthusiasm from investors and a potential slowdown in financings for 2022. In total, January of 2022 has recorded significantly less fundraising than each of the past two years, with $4.8 billion (79 transactions), well below 2021’s $10.79 billion (159 transactions) and down from 2020’s $6.95 billion (131 transactions).