Press Release
Stemloop Awarded Funding from DARPA’s Artificial Intelligence and Biotechnology Initiative to Enable Machine Learning for Biosensors
Washington D.C. – December 6, 2024
Stemloop, Inc. (“Stemloop”)—The Biosensor Company—has been awarded catalytic funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Biological Technologies Office as part of its Artificial Intelligence (AI) Biotechnology initiative. The award supports Stemloop’s work to generate training data for machine learning (ML) models of next-generation biosensors, directly addressing DARPA’s mission to make pivotal investments in breakthrough technologies for national security.
“This award validates our cutting-edge capabilities and platform for biosensor discovery and development,” said Khalid K. Alam, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Stemloop. “It kickstarts our goal of creating ML models for biosensors and decreasing development time by 10-fold.”
The award comes at a pivotal moment for AI/ML and biotechnology, following the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry’s recognition of computational protein design and structure prediction. While recent breakthroughs have accelerated the field, it faces a critical challenge: insufficient data to train models to predict protein function. The award from DARPA enables Stemloop to address this gap by generating large-scale functional data that can be used to train models for protein biosensors.
Stemloop co-founder, Julius B. Lucks Ph.D., added, “the last two years have seen an explosion in AI’s ability to model design biomolecular structures, but we haven’t had the functional data to design biosensors. Stemloop’s high-throughput discovery and characterization platform promises to close this gap and usher in a new wave of AI-designed biosensor products.”
Stemloop’s next-generation biosensor technology has transformative potential across a wide range of industries. The technology can be used to detect contaminants in food and water, accelerate research in the life sciences, and enable next-generation wearables for health and wellness monitoring. “While traditional methods are costly and slow, Stemloop’s biosensors overcome these barriers with rapid, cost-effective, and easy-to-use solutions powered by cell-free synthetic biology,” said Stemloop co-founder Michael C. Jewett, Ph.D.
This award further solidifies Stemloop’s position as a global leader in the field. With a proven track record of $2.7M in non-dilutive funding and $1M in pre-seed venture capital, the company is well-positioned to revolutionize how we measure and monitor the small molecules that make up our world. “DARPA’s support is a significant step forward in our journey to unlock the power of biology to sense and respond to the world’s challenges,” said Alam.
About Stemloop
Stemloop, Inc. (“Stemloop”)—The Biosensor Company—is on a mission to unlock the power of biology to sense and respond to the world’s challenges. Stemloop discovers, develops, and deploys biosensors to address large-scale, unmet small molecule testing needs with revolutionary technology invented by the world’s leading experts in synthetic biology. Stemloop’s proprietary Plover Pipeline™ and patented ROSALIND™ biosensors provide high-performance and scalable solutions across human and planetary health applications. Based in Evanston, Illinois, Stemloop operates a state-of-the-art laboratory and office. The company is currently raising a seed round to commercialize its first products and expand platform capabilities.
For more information, please contact [email protected].
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