Lila Bio Secures $3.65M NIH Grant for AI-Designed Protein Therapeutics

Seattle startup Lila Bio has secured a $3.65 million grant from the NIH to advance its work on an AI-designed protein therapy for pulmonary hypertension, GeekWire reported on November 12, 2026. According to the report, the company intends to address the underlying mechanism of the disease rather than only managing its symptoms. The research effort is currently confined to the lab and animal-testing stages, and the award will support its continued development. No timeline has been disclosed for moving the program into clinical trials, and the report does not specify when Lila Bio expects to share data from the funded work. Lila Bio is positioning the effort within the broader trend of using computational design to speed up protein engineering for rare and underserved conditions. The grant's focus on pulmonary hypertension highlights the company's bet that AI-guided design can produce candidates suited to a disease with high unmet need. Beyond the award itself, the report does not cover commercialization plans or a regulatory pathway, leaving the program's next steps largely undocumented in the public record.