Vilya launches out of Baker lab with $50 million

Vilya, a start-up based on the work of David Baker and other scientists at the University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design, has launched with $50 mil- lion in series A financing. Vilya says it will use computational approaches such as machine learning to design therapeutic peptides and other molecules that are between small molecules and antibodies in size. The molecules will have drug-like properties, including membrane permeability and the ability to disrupt interactions between proteins. Monod Bio, another Baker lab spin-out, recently received $25 million in seed funding.