ProFound Therapeutics
ProFound Therapeutics is a privately-held bioplatform company that uses proprietary ribosome profiling, AI/ML, and high-throughput validation to discover novel human proteins, licensing its discoveries to large pharmaceutical partners. Founded in 2020 at Flagship Pioneering, it serves cardiovascular, respiratory, liver, metabolic, and oncology drug discovery efforts.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2020
- HeadquartersCambridge, United States
- Headcount11–50
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What ProFound Therapeutics does
ProFound Therapeutics is a privately-held bioplatform company founded in 2020 at Flagship Pioneering's Flagship Labs and publicly unveiled in May 2022 with an initial $75 million commitment from Flagship. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the company operates on the hypothesis that the human proteome is materially larger than the approximately 20,000 protein-coding genes identified by the Human Genome Project. Through its proprietary ProFoundry Platform — which combines industrialized ribosome profiling (RiboSeq), AI/ML-driven protein function prediction, and high-throughput functional validation assays — ProFound has identified tens of thousands of previously undiscovered human proteins encoded by genomic regions outside the conventional protein-coding canon. The platform is anchored by the ProFoundry Atlas, a proprietary database containing over one trillion data points across genomic, epigenomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and translatomic dimensions.
The company does not commercialize therapeutics directly. Its business model is built on multi-year strategic collaboration and licensing agreements with large pharmaceutical partners, in which ProFound provides platform-driven target discovery and early preclinical development in exchange for upfront payments, near-term milestone payments, downstream development and regulatory milestones (disclosed at up to $750 million per target in the Novartis cardiovascular collaboration), and tiered royalties on future product sales. Its named enterprise customers are Novartis (cardiovascular disease, four-year collaboration announced June 2025 with $25 million in upfront and near-term milestones), GSK (feasibility agreements for respiratory and liver diseases announced November 2025), and Pfizer (obesity therapeutics under the Flagship-Pfizer strategic partnership framework announced June 2024). The company serves pharmaceutical partners pursuing first-in-class therapeutics across cardiovascular, respiratory, liver, metabolic, and oncology indications.
ProFound is led by CEO John Lepore, M.D. (former SVP, Head of Research at GSK), with a leadership team including CSO Klaus Urbahns, Ph.D. (ex-Merck KGaA/AstraZeneca/Bayer), COO Kala Subramanian, Ph.D. (ex-Novartis/Gilead/CRISPR Therapeutics), and CTO Tom Chittenden, Ph.D., DPhil (ex-BullFrog AI, BioAI Health, HiberCell). The company was named a Fierce Biotech Fierce 15 company in 2024 and remains wholly backed by Flagship Pioneering.
ProFound Therapeutics firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- ProFound Therapeutics
- Legal name
- ProFound Therapeutics
- Website
- https://profoundtx.com
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2020
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 11–50 employees
- Short description
- ProFound Therapeutics is a privately-held bioplatform company that uses proprietary ribosome profiling, AI/ML, and high-throughput validation to discover novel human proteins, licensing its discoveries to large pharmaceutical partners. Founded in 2020 at Flagship Pioneering, it serves cardiovascular, respiratory, liver, metabolic, and oncology drug discovery efforts.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
ProFound Therapeutics industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Therapeutic Discovery Platform
- NAICS
- Research and Development in Biotechnology (except Nanobiotechnology) (541714), Scientific Research and Development Services (5417)
- SIC
- Services-Commercial Physical & Biological Research (8731)
- akta.pro primary industry
- AI/ML-Enabled Biologic Discovery Platforms (computational design, in silico screening) (HLAAAIAE)
- akta.pro secondary industries
- Drug Discovery (Target ID/Validation & Hit Discovery) (HLAIALAA), Target Identification & Validation Platforms (omics-driven, chemoproteomics, genetic validation) (HLAAAIAI), Engineered Protein Therapeutics (de novo/AI-designed proteins, novel scaffolds) (HLAAAAAJ)
Keywords
Where ProFound Therapeutics is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Cambridge
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Offices1 record
Markets served
ProFound Therapeutics business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure
Revenue model
- Strategic Partnerships and Licensing: ProFound generates revenue through multi-year strategic collaboration agreements with pharmaceutical companies. These deals typically include upfront payments, near-term milestone payments, downstream development and regulatory milestones (valued at hundreds of millions per target), and tiered royalties on future product sales. The company does not commercialize products directly but licenses its platform discoveries and development candidates to pharmaceutical partners.
- Platform Technology Access Fees: Feasibility agreements and early-stage exploration partnerships where pharma partners pay for access to ProFound's platform capabilities to discover novel therapeutic targets in specific disease areas.
Go-to-market motion1 record
Distribution channels1 record
Marketing channels4 records
ProFound Therapeutics product offering
Product offeringCore offering
ProFound Therapeutics discovers and develops novel therapeutic proteins and drug targets by systematically characterizing the expanded human proteome. The company's core offering is the ProFoundry Platform, an integrated discovery engine combining industrialized ribosome profiling (RiboSeq), proprietary AI/ML algorithms, and high-throughput functional validation to identify and prioritize tens of thousands of previously unknown human proteins. ProFound does not commercialize drugs directly; instead, it licenses its platform discoveries and development candidates to large pharmaceutical partners via multi-year collaboration agreements.
Product overview
ProFound Therapeutics operates as a single unified product company built around the ProFoundry™ Platform. The platform consists of two integrated components: the ProFoundry™ Atlas, which serves as the core knowledge database of tens of thousands of novel proteins and their biological functions, and the surrounding discovery and validation tools that enable systematic identification, prediction, and functional validation of proteins from the expanded human proteome for therapeutic development.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Products and services
- ProFoundry Platform A proprietary discovery platform that combines industrialized ribosome profiling (RiboSeq), AI/ML-driven protein function prediction, and high-throughput functional validation assays to systematically identify and characterize novel proteins from the expanded human proteome and assess their therapeutic potential. Licensed to large pharmaceutical partners via multi-year strategic collaboration agreements.
- ProFoundry Atlas The central knowledge engine of the ProFoundry Platform and the world's largest database linking human proteins encoded by novel open reading frames (ORFs) to their function and roles in health and disease. Contains insights from over 1 trillion data points across genome, epigenome, transcriptome, proteome, and translatome dimensions and catalogues tens of thousands of novel proteins.
Quantifiable outcome
- Discovered tens of thousands of previously unknown human proteins
- +2 more outcomes
Companies that use ProFound Therapeutics
Customer profileNamed customers3 records
Segments3 records
Ideal customer profiles3 records
ProFound Therapeutics technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- No
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
AI capability3 records
Feature4 records
ProFound Therapeutics partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Four partnerships are on record, tiered core and flagship.
- GSKcoreSeparate feasibility agreements under the Flagship-GSK framework collaboration to discover and validate novel treatments for respiratory and liver diseases. ProFound will leverage its ProFoundry Platform to characterize novel proteins with genetic associations to COPD and Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis. If GSK elects to progress, ProFound advances preclinical activities before GSK receives exclusive option to advance to clinical studies.
- NovartiscoreFour-year strategic collaboration to discover and develop novel therapeutics for cardiovascular diseases. ProFound receives $25M upfront with potential value of $750M per selected target plus tiered royalties. ProFound leverages its ProFoundry Platform to identify previously unknown proteins as novel drug targets for cardiovascular disease, combining with Novartis's cardiovascular drug development expertise.
- PfizercoreCollaboration under the Flagship-Pfizer strategic partnership to identify novel first-in-class protein therapeutics for obesity treatment. ProFound deploys its ProFoundry Platform with Pioneering Medicines (Flagship's in-house drug development unit) to discover novel proteins for obesity. Pfizer has option to advance selected programs under the strategic partnership terms. Obesity affects an estimated 1.9 billion people globally by 2035.
- Flagship PioneeringflagshipFlagship Pioneering is the parent company and founder of ProFound Therapeutics. Founded ProFound in 2020 at Flagship Labs and initially committed $75M to advance the ProFoundry Platform. Flagship conceives, creates, resources, and develops first-in-category bioplatform companies.
Scale indicators6 records
Recent moves7 records
Expansion highlights5 records
ProFound Therapeutics competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- Laronde Therapeutics: Another Flagship Pioneering bioplatform company developing engineered 'eLng' (endless RNA) protein therapeutics. Directly comparable as a sibling Flagship platform pursuing novel programmable protein/RNA medicines for pharma partnerships.
- Generate Biomedicines: Generative AI platform for de novo protein therapeutic design, pursuing pharma partnerships across multiple disease areas. Comparable as a Flagship-adjacent AI/ML protein-design platform with similar enterprise-partnership business model.
- Cradle Bio: AI/ML platform for protein engineering and design serving biotech and pharma partners. Comparable as a direct competitor using machine learning to discover and engineer novel protein therapeutics for partnership-based revenue.
- Ring Therapeutics: Flagship Pioneering bioplatform developing programmable anellovirus-based gene therapy. Comparable as a sibling Flagship platform pursuing novel biological entities (anelloviruses) for therapeutic use via pharma partnerships.
Emerging players
- BigHat Biosciences: AI/ML-driven antibody design platform combining wet-lab high-throughput experimentation with ML. Comparable in combining ML-driven protein design with experimental validation, but focused on antibodies rather than the broader expanded-proteome thesis.
- Absci: AI-driven generative protein design company with integrated wet-lab capabilities for antibody and biologic drug creation. Comparable in pairing AI/ML protein design with high-throughput functional validation and pharma partnerships.
- EvolutionaryScale: AI research company building frontier protein language models for protein design and therapeutic applications. Comparable as an emerging AI protein-design player pursuing enterprise partnerships around novel protein generation.
Broad incumbents
- Recursion Pharmaceuticals: Publicly traded AI/ML-driven drug discovery platform combining high-throughput biology with computational methods. Comparable as a larger, established AI drug-discovery platform pursuing pharma partnerships and internal pipeline development.
- insitro: Machine learning-driven drug discovery company combining high-throughput biology with ML models to identify novel targets. Comparable as a broader AI/biotech platform with partnership business model and target-discovery focus.
- Isomorphic Labs: Alphabet-owned commercial venture applying DeepMind's protein-structure and AI capabilities to drug discovery, with major pharma partnerships (Eli Lilly, Novartis). Comparable as a well-capitalized AI-first drug discovery platform competing for similar pharma partner relationships.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat4 records
Key risks7 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
ProFound Therapeutics social profiles
Digital presenceProFound Therapeutics financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
ProFound Therapeutics leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles13 records
ProFound Therapeutics funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds2 records
Investors2 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
ProFound Therapeutics M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about ProFound Therapeutics
What does ProFound Therapeutics do?
ProFound Therapeutics discovers and develops novel therapeutic proteins and drug targets by systematically characterizing the expanded human proteome. The company's core offering is the ProFoundry Platform, an integrated discovery engine combining industrialized ribosome profiling (RiboSeq), proprietary AI/ML algorithms, and high-throughput functional validation to identify and prioritize tens of thousands of previously unknown human proteins. ProFound does not commercialize drugs directly; instead, it licenses its platform discoveries and development candidates to large pharmaceutical partners via multi-year collaboration agreements.
Is ProFound Therapeutics a public or private company?
ProFound Therapeutics is a private company. It is classified as venture growth investor backed and is currently operating.
When was ProFound Therapeutics founded?
ProFound Therapeutics was founded in 2020. It employs 11 to 50 people.
Where is ProFound Therapeutics based?
ProFound Therapeutics is headquartered in Cambridge, United States, in the North America region.
How does ProFound Therapeutics make money?
Two revenue lines are on record. Strategic Partnerships and Licensing is the primary driver. The others are platform Technology Access Fees.
Who are ProFound Therapeutics's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are Laronde Therapeutics, Generate Biomedicines, Cradle Bio and Ring Therapeutics. Emerging players are BigHat Biosciences, Absci and EvolutionaryScale. Broad incumbents are Recursion Pharmaceuticals, insitro and Isomorphic Labs.
Does ProFound Therapeutics have an API?
No public API is recorded for ProFound Therapeutics.
What industry is ProFound Therapeutics in?
ProFound Therapeutics's product category is Therapeutic Discovery Platform. Its primary akta.pro industry code is HLAAAIAE, AI/ML-Enabled Biologic Discovery Platforms (computational design, in silico screening), with a secondary code of HLAIALAA, Drug Discovery (Target ID/Validation & Hit Discovery). Its NAICS code is 541714 and its SIC code is 8731.