How automotive exec Crystal Brown founded CircNova, an AI drug discovery biotech

Tiny Michigan biotech startup CircNova has raised a $3.3 million seed round for its technology that uses AI to target “circular RNA.” The development holds promise as a new method to quickly develop therapies for conditions that currently have no drug treatments. The new funding is also a victory lap for co-founder and CEO Crystal Brown, who took an unconventional path to becoming a biotech founder. RNA, or ribonucleic acid, is a key molecule that helps convert genetic information into proteins. Circular RNA is a relatively newly discovered class of such structures that form a circle rather than a strand. It regulates critical biological processes, and the hope is that therapies based on these molecules will be able to target complex health issues. CircNova has developed a “proprietary AI engine that allows us to identify, design, and then produce novel, non-coding, circular RNAs,” Brown told TechCrunch. It’s an AI engine similar to Google’s AlphaFold, in that it also uses deep lea ... Read full article.