Qureight has raised almost £7 million in Series A funding to accelerate drug development in lung and heart disease.
The Cambridge firm’s cloud platform leverages imaging data analytics and AI technology to help the best new drugs get approved.
Its technology can be used by hospitals, clinical research organisations and multinational pharmaceutical companies to find new treatments for complex lung and heart disease.
Hargreave Hale AIM VCT led the round, joined by XTX Ventures, Guinness Ventures, and existing investors including Playfair Capital, Meltwind, Ascension Life Fund and Cambridge Angels.
Complex lung and heart diseases, such as Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) and Pulmonary Hypertension, currently have limited treatment options and poor survival rates.
Typically, high-value data from patient scans and records is stored across numerous platforms and databases in an unstructured form. Researchers must manually extract relevant data from source for their research, a hugely expensive and time-consuming process.
Built to tackle this complex problem, Qureight’s digital infrastructure houses and curates multiple types of medical data for powerful analysis.
Qureight has unique healthcare access through data contracts across NHS England and can collect CT scans, biomarkers and other trial endpoints directly from hospitals or clinical research organisations (CROs) in real time as a complex disease drug trial progresses. This information is securely collated and structured, ready for analysis.
The insights from this analysis can be used to look for drug responses and find new endpoints. The structured data can also be used to build virtual trial patients, making it easier to run AI models and compare disparate data sets.
Ultimately, this allows for the design of more resource-efficient clinical trials, to improve existing disease treatments, and to develop powerful new drugs.
Qureight has ongoing strategic collaborations and research partnerships with some of the most well-known healthcare, research and pharmaceutical companies in the world, including AstraZeneca, Vicore Pharma, and several NHS Trusts.
Following the close of this round, new Qureight board members include Dr Debra Barker, an experienced healthcare NED and chief medical officer and previous SVP at Novartis, and Jenny Winter, CEO of Animalcare Group and previous VP at AstraZeneca.
Consultant thoracic radiologist Dr Simon Walsh joins the Qureight team as chief scientific officer. He was previously a NIHR clinician scientist at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College, London, and is the outgoing imaging chair at the European Respiratory Society.
He is also a member of the Fleischner Society – a prestigious global group of 60 leading respiratory scientists and radiologists.
“The close of our Series A round marks the ‘end of the beginning’ and the start of a new chapter for Qureight, as we turn our focus to developing our platform and creating products in new disease areas,” said Dr Muhunthan Thillai, founder and CEO.
“Our mission to extend the lives of lung and heart disease patients will be bolstered by the invaluable expertise of our new board and new senior team members, and we are looking forward to adding to our strategic biopharma collaborations.”
Lucy Bloomfield, co-manager of the Hargreave Hale AIM VCT, commented: “Hargreave Hale AIM VCT has a long tradition of investing in innovative, high growth companies, and the application of AI in life sciences is a particular area of interest.
“Through the investment process, the team at Qureight has impressed us with their vision and expertise. We are delighted to be the lead investor on this funding round and look forward to supporting Qureight as the company expands its capability.”