A Canadian biotechnology company spun out of McMaster University has secured $2.5 million in early-stage capital to develop a pipeline of new medicines that target infectious disease and cancer.
Stoked Bio Inc. was established in 2024 by McMaster researcher Jon Stokes, and functions as the commercial arm of his academic lab, which is built on a world-leading AI-guided drug discovery platform.
Already, his platform has helped produce, identify, and characterize several novel molecules with high therapeutic potential.
“At McMaster, we’re leveraging AI to dramatically speed up the drug discovery process, while simultaneously lowering the cost of this traditionally expensive research,” says Stokes, the company’s chief scientific officer and a member of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research at McMaster.
“It’s the company’s job to translate those academic discoveries into real-world treatments that improve patients’ lives. This seed funding is an important first step to help us do just that.”
The new financing, announced this month, marks the close of the company’s initial seed funding round, which company executives say was oversubscribed, suggesting a high degree of investor confidence in the company and its approach.
Stokes, who is also a faculty member at the Marnix E. Heersink School of Biomedical Innovation and Entrepreneurship and an executive member of NexusHealth, says much of that confidence is rooted in the viability of Stoked Bio’s lead drug candidate: a novel, McMaster-discovered antibiotic called enterololin, which targets a group of dangerous bacteria called Enterobacteriaceae.
Beyond acute infections, these bacteria — classified as priority pathogens by the World Health Organization — are also implicated in chronic conditions such as Crohn’s disease, underscoring the new drug candidate’s broad therapeutic potential.
Stoked Bio CEO Jeff Skinner says enterololin’s immense promise as a Crohn’s treatment reflects a broader strategy, with many of the company’s other drug candidates targeting similarly hard-to-treat conditions, including Parkinson’s Disease, brain cancer and drug-resistant infections.
“Stoked Bio was founded on the idea of tackling diseases with a real need for new therapeutic options,” says Skinner. “This financing, in combination with significant non-dilutive funding, provides us with runway to advance our growing portfolio of novel drug candidates to late-stage proof-of-concept and initiate partnering discussions.”
Notably, 99 per cent of the new financing was provided by Ontario-based investors, emphasizing strong regional support for the company and its mission. The funding also arrives on the heels of a $2 million grant from the Weston Family Foundation to further support the clinical development of enterololin.
Stokes says these recent funding milestones will power closer-than-ever ties between his lab and his company, ensuring an “intellectual continuity” that will help propel a suite of new drug candidates toward the clinic with high efficiency.
“In most cases, discovery research and clinical development processes are quite disconnected,” says Stokes. “This support will allow our group to carry our discoveries forward ourselves, which I believe will maximize the chances that they become clinical therapeutics that improve patient health.”