Insamo

Insamo is a Berkeley, California-based biotechnology company founded in 2022 by CEO Timothy Craven PhD, along with fellow PhD scientists, to pioneer the discovery of membrane-permeable and orally available cyclic peptides with antibody-like binding affinity. The company's platform combines automated design, synthesis, and testing of macrocyclic peptides at unprecedented scale, leveraging trillions of proprietary experimental data points across a vast drug-like chemical space to apply scalable machine learning to drug design. Macrocyclic peptides represent a compelling 'Goldilocks' modality that combines the potency and selectivity of biologics — such as blockbuster antibody therapies — with the oral bioavailability and ease of administration of small molecules. This capability could potentially transform drugs like Dupixent into oral formulations, opening up new treatment paradigms for diseases that currently require injectable biologics. Insamo's iterative design cycle is driven by a proprietary ML platform that continuously improves based on experimental results. The company launched publicly in February 2024 after raising a $12 million seed round led by Playground Global, venBio Partners, and MRL Ventures Fund (Merck's venture arm), with the founding team drawn from the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington.