UK biotech Ternary raises £3.6m to scale AI platform for next-generation drugs

London-based biotechnology startup Ternary Therapeutics has secured £3.6 million in seed funding to accelerate the development of its artificial intelligence-driven platform designed to engineer a new class of medicines known as molecular glues.

The funding round was led by European venture capital firm daphni, with participation from Pace Ventures, i&i Biotech Fund and the UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund, which is managed by Future Planet Capital. The investment will support the expansion of Ternary’s AI platform, its research team and its early drug development programmes.

Founded in November 2024 and headquartered in London, Ternary Therapeutics is developing a technology platform that combines machine learning, physics-based molecular modelling and rapid laboratory validation to design molecular glues — a promising but still emerging category of drugs that can target proteins previously considered undruggable.

Unlike traditional medicines, which typically work by binding directly to a target protein and inhibiting its function, molecular glues operate by bringing two proteins together to trigger the destruction or modification of disease-causing proteins. This mechanism has become one of the most exciting areas of drug discovery in recent years, particularly in fields such as cancer, autoimmune disorders and neurological diseases.

However, most molecular glues discovered to date have emerged largely by accident during broader drug discovery programmes rather than through deliberate design. Ternary aims to change that dynamic by applying computational methods and artificial intelligence to turn molecular glue discovery into a systematic engineering process.

The company’s platform uses AI models to predict how proteins behave within the body and identify potential molecules capable of binding them together. These candidate molecules are then tested experimentally in the laboratory, with the results fed back into the system to improve the predictive accuracy of the models.

By repeating this cycle of computational prediction and experimental validation, Ternary hopes to dramatically accelerate the discovery of new medicines and open up drug targets that have historically been inaccessible to conventional pharmaceutical approaches.

Dr Chris Tame, co-founder and chief executive of Ternary Therapeutics, said the company’s goal is to transform molecular glue discovery from a matter of luck into a scalable design discipline.

“Molecular glues have delivered some of the most exciting breakthroughs in drug discovery over the past decade, but historically they’ve been discovered largely by chance rather than through a systematic process,” he said.

“Our platform is designed to change that by combining physics-informed AI with rapid experimental validation to engineer these molecules intentionally and at scale. That allows us to approach drug discovery more like an engineering problem than a process of trial and error.”

Tame said the new capital would allow the company to expand its computational infrastructure, grow its scientific team and advance its most promising programmes towards preclinical development, while also laying the groundwork for partnerships with global pharmaceutical companies.

The company has already developed an early pipeline of programmes focused on inflammatory and neuroinflammatory diseases and has established research collaborations with several biotechnology and pharmaceutical partners.

Investors believe the technology could help unlock a significant new frontier in drug discovery.

Cristian Pinto, investor at daphni, said designing molecular glues predictably represents one of the most complex scientific challenges in modern medicine.

“Ternary has built a disciplined platform that integrates machine learning, physics and experimental biology to tackle that challenge,” he said.

The investment also reflects growing momentum across the biotechnology sector around targeted protein degradation, an approach that seeks to eliminate disease-causing proteins rather than simply blocking their activity.

Oliver Sexton, investment director at the UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund, said advances in artificial intelligence and computational power are enabling researchers to understand biological systems with far greater precision than ever before.

“Ternary’s approach to drug design is enabled by its compute power,” he said. “The combination of expanding knowledge of biology and recent developments in AI allows it to understand massive complexity and generate molecular glue drug candidates that target areas historically considered out of reach.”

A large proportion of proteins involved in human disease lack obvious drug-binding sites, limiting the effectiveness of traditional drug design approaches. Molecular glues offer an alternative route by creating entirely new interactions between proteins inside cells.

If platforms like Ternary’s succeed in designing these interactions reliably, they could significantly expand the number of treatable diseases and unlock major new opportunities for collaboration between biotechnology startups and large pharmaceutical companies.

The investment in Ternary comes amid rising global interest in AI-driven drug discovery, as advances in machine learning and structural biology reshape the economics and speed of pharmaceutical research.

With fresh capital now secured, the company plans to accelerate development of its platform while advancing its first therapeutic candidates toward clinical readiness.

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UK biotech Ternary raises £3.6m to scale AI platform for next-generation drugs