Immunai

Immunai is a biotechnology company that combines single-cell multi-omic data generation with machine learning to characterize the immune system and support therapeutic discovery and development. Its platform follows a five-stage workflow: generating multi-omic data from clinical and preclinical samples (whole transcriptome RNA, surface proteome, TCR/BCR repertoire and spatial transcriptomics from blood, tumor/tissue, in vitro and ex vivo samples); augmenting that data with AMICA, the company's Annotated Multi-omic Immune Cell Atlas, a harmonized immune-focused single-cell database built from internal experiments, academic partnerships and curated public data; computing immune features through an "Immunodynamics Engine" analytical framework that links immune mechanisms to treatment response; validating machine-learning-derived hypotheses in the lab using functional genomics; and delivering recommendations in a scorecard format intended to be interpretable rather than a black box.

The platform is packaged into three commercial solutions: target discovery, preclinical evaluation of drug candidates, and clinical trial optimization (mechanism of action, patient selection and treatment strategy). Application areas span inflammatory and oncological research, including cell therapy work for neuroblastoma with Baylor College of Medicine. Reported AMICA scale figures include roughly 5,000-6,000 studies (350+ single-cell studies), 800+ cell types including 80 immune cell types, 500+ diseases and more than 300,000 patient samples.

Founding story

The company was co-founded in December 2018 by Noam Solomon, who serves as CEO. Solomon holds a double PhD in mathematics and computer science and was a postdoctoral researcher at MIT's mathematics department and Harvard's Center of Mathematical Sciences and Applications, and previously worked as an algorithms developer, data scientist and head of data science at technology companies in Israel.

Business model

Immunai partners with biopharmaceutical companies and research institutions, applying its data platform to their drug discovery and development programs. Management has stated the company places less reliance on large upfront payments and emphasizes success-based payments in partner agreements.

Revenue derives from partnership and collaboration agreements with pharmaceutical and biotech companies, structured with an emphasis on success-based rather than upfront payments.

Traction

By late 2021 Immunai reported more than 30 company and academic collaborations, a 120-person workforce of which roughly half came from technology or engineering backgrounds, and progress from correlative to causal inference results using its functional genomics platform. Company materials cite 80+ PhDs on staff and partnerships with academic centers and biopharmaceutical companies.

Latest developments

Current company materials highlight partnerships with AstraZeneca on IBD target discovery and with Teva on vitiligo disease mechanism and biomarker discovery for an IL15-targeted antibody, and describe three productized solutions covering target discovery, preclinical evaluation and clinical trial optimization.