AI-driven drug turnaround company Ignota Labs has closed a £5.5m seed funding round to expand its pipeline.
The London-based MedTech plans to do this by acquiring additional distressed assets.
Funding will also be used for advancement into early-stage clinical trials of their first asset – a PDE9A inhibitor.
Ignota Labs is looking to address the issue of drug safety failures by applying deep learning, cheminformatics, and bioinformatics to uncover and resolve the root causes of drug toxicity.
Drug safety failures prevent over 56% of drugs from reaching patients and are currently costing the pharmaceutical industry over $400bn every year.
“We’re thrilled to have the support of this leading investor syndicate in our mission to rescue promising yet struggling drugs with our technology,” said Sam Windsor, CEO and co-founder of Ignota Labs.
“Traditional safety assessments reveal when something is wrong, but our platform goes a step further by identifying the exact molecular and biological issues to provide actionable insights to re-engineer and revive therapies.
“With this funding, we can expand our efforts to salvage distressed assets and accelerate the delivery of life-saving therapies to patients.”
Cambridge Innovation Capital launches £100m Opportunity Fund
The investment round was co-led by Montage Ventures and AIX Ventures with participation from Modi Ventures, Blue Wire Capital, and Gaingels.
Todd Kimmel, founder and managing partner of Montage Ventures, added: “Ignota Labs is solving one of the most critical challenges in drug development, rescuing promising therapies that would otherwise be abandoned due to safety issues.
“Their SAFEPATH platform represents a groundbreaking approach, combining cutting-edge AI with deep scientific expertise to address the root causes of drug toxicity.”
Its SAFEPATH platform is used to determine the underlying issues and develop solutions.
The company says its model reduces development timelines by years and costs by millions, as well as offering multi-billion-dollar potential for each recovered therapy.
The MedTech has also successfully in-licensed its first asset, a metabolic health drug which it says holds the potential to improve the lives of over 1.2bn post-menopausal women.