According to GeekWire, Seattle startup Accipiter Bio just emerged from stealth with $12.7 million in seed funding and major pharmaceutical partnerships with Pfizer and Kite Pharma. The company spun out from University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design, which is led by 2024 Nobel Chemistry Prize winner David Baker. They’re using AI tools developed in that lab to engineer completely new proteins that can bind multiple cellular targets simultaneously. The Pfizer deal alone could be worth over $330 million in milestone payments and royalties, while the Kite Pharma agreement gives them option rights on molecules developed for cell therapies. Accipiter Bio already has four internal drug programs, with two preparing for FDA discussions about human testing.
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The multi-target revolution
Here’s what makes this approach genuinely interesting. Drug combinations often work better than single therapies, but coordinating them is incredibly difficult. You’re basically trying to get two separate drugs to arrive at the same place at the same time and work together perfectly. Accipiter’s solution? Design single proteins that naturally hit multiple targets from the start.
Think about cancer treatment. Sometimes you need to trigger several cellular functions simultaneously to create what CEO Matthew Bick calls a “multiplicative” effect rather than just additive. But the regulatory and development advantages might be even more compelling. When you combine two separate drugs, each needs its own Phase 1 safety trial plus another trial testing them together. A single multi-functional protein? Just one Phase 1 trial. That’s potentially years and millions of dollars saved.
Nobel pedigree meets hard lessons
The team’s background is both impressive and battle-tested. All three co-founders previously worked at Neoleukin Therapeutics, another protein design company that spun out from the same UW lab. Neoleukin’s lead drug candidate ultimately underperformed in Phase 1 trials, leading to layoffs and a merger.
But here’s the thing – that experience might be their secret weapon. Bick says they learned crucial lessons about running multiple programs simultaneously and preventing immunogenicity (unwanted immune responses to engineered proteins). They were part of the team that took “the first fully de novo protein into patients.” That’s valuable scar tissue you can’t get from success alone.
Where this could lead
We’re seeing something fundamental shift in biotech. As Flying Fish Partners’ Heather Gorham noted, computation isn’t just speeding up biology anymore – it’s expanding what’s biologically possible. The ability to design proteins from scratch rather than tweaking existing ones opens up entirely new therapeutic modalities.
Accipiter’s early focus on cancers and irritable bowel syndrome makes sense – these are complex diseases where multi-target approaches could really shine. But the platform’s potential extends much further. If they can reliably design proteins that hit multiple targets with precision, we might be looking at a new generation of smarter, more efficient biologics.
The fact that pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer are already betting big suggests this isn’t just academic curiosity. They’re putting real money behind the idea that AI-designed multi-target proteins could solve “previously unattainable” therapeutic problems. It’s still early days, and drug development remains brutally difficult, but the convergence of Nobel-winning science, hard-won experience, and serious industry backing makes this one to watch. Check out their approach at accipiterbio.com.
