Lila Bio wins $3.65M NIH grant for AI-designed lung disease drug
What's the deal? Lila BioDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a Seattle startup spun out of Nobel laureate David Baker's lab at the University of Washington, has won a $3.65 million grant from the National Institutes of HealthDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → to develop a treatment for pulmonary hypertension. The condition raises blood pressure in the arteries feeding the lungs, forcing the heart to work harder and risking heart failure.
What's the endgame? The Small Business Innovation Research fast-track award, from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood InstituteDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, backs a protein-based therapy that could be given by injection a few times a year. Lila designs therapeutic proteins using AI and machine learning; its long-acting injectable platform supports this project.
Why now? The grant comes in two phases. An initial $605,981 funds early testing in mice, rats, and non-human primates; a second phase of $3,049,462 supports further animal studies and tests using lung tissue from patients.
What's Lila building? Jake Kraft and chief scientist Anindya Roy co-founded the company in 2023, both former postdoctoral fellows at UW's Institute for Protein Design, which Baker directs. Lila raised $10 million in seed funding that year and last year struck a collaboration with Eli Lilly on solid tumor treatments.
What's the pitch? "Most approved therapies only manage symptoms, such as vasodilators," Kraft said in a LinkedIn post, referring to drugs that widen blood vessels. "Lila Bio is pursuing clinically-validated, disease-modifying mechanisms that treat the underlying disease."
What could go wrong? The award is non-dilutive and preclinical — an early research milestone, not a near-term treatment. Pulmonary hypertension carries clinical risk: Pfizer recently dropped a program for business reasons, and Gossamer's seralutinib faces regulatory scrutiny after missing a Phase 3 trial threshold.
The signal: The grant ranks in the top 5% by size among all-time AI-focused grant rounds, though it is modest beside recent pulmonary hypertension deals — Alaunos raised $350 million with its VelarisDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → acquisition, and GSK agreed to buy 35Pharma for $950 million. Lila's smaller, non-dilutive award backs a distinct AI-designed-protein approach in a disease area drawing heavy pharma interest.
Read more: geekwire.com
Image credit: Lila Bio
