Fauna Bio is a private, preclinical-stage biotech founded in 2018 and headquartered in Emeryville, California. The company has pioneered a unique drug discovery platform that mines genetic data from a proprietary biobank of extreme mammals to find novel targets for diseases like obesity, fibrosis, and muscle wasting. Its business model is a hybrid of platform licensing and therapeutic development, evidenced by a significant $494M+ partnership with Eli Lilly in obesity. Fauna Bio also engages in innovative space health research funded by NASA and other space agencies, exploring the protective effects of hibernation for astronauts.
ObesityMetabolic DisordersFibrosisMuscle WastingRegenerative Medicine
Technology Platform
Convergence™ AI platform: An integrated system that analyzes multi-omic data from a proprietary biobank of extreme mammals (e.g., hibernating ground squirrels, regenerative spiny mice) to identify novel therapeutic targets by comparing evolved disease resistance in animals to human disease pathways.
Funding History
5
Total raised:$33.6M
Series A$23.8MLifeforce Capital
Grant$177KNHGRI
Seed$9MBoom Capital
Grant$373KNHGRI
Opportunities
The massive and growing obesity market, validated by recent GLP-1 agonist success, provides a clear commercial pathway through the Lilly collaboration.
The platform's applicability to high-need areas like fibrosis, regeneration, and metabolic diseases represents multiple additional shots on goal for future partnerships.
Space health research offers non-dilutive funding and generates unique physiological data that could inform terrestrial medicine.
Risk Factors
The core translational risk is high, as mimicking complex, evolved animal adaptations in humans with a single drug is biologically challenging.
The company's financial and reputational success is currently heavily dependent on the output and progression of the single Lilly partnership.
The AI-driven drug discovery field is intensely competitive, requiring continuous platform validation and data advantage maintenance.
Competitive Landscape
Fauna Bio competes with other AI/ML-driven drug discovery platforms (e.g., Recursion, Exscientia, Insilico Medicine) but is differentiated by its exclusive focus on comparative genomics from extreme mammals. It also faces indirect competition from genomics companies mining human genetic data for drug targets. Its unique biobank of animal data is a key competitive moat, though other entities study hibernation and animal regeneration in academia.
