Healx, the AI-powered and patient-inspired technology company specialising in treatments for rare diseases, today announces that it has raised $56 million in a Series B financing round, led by Atomico and joined by Intel Capital, Global Brain and btov Partners.
All previous investors, including Balderton Capital, Amadeus Capital Partners, and Jonathan Milner also participated in the round.
Where the traditional drug discovery model takes more than a decade and can run into the billions of dollars, Healx’s AI-driven approach makes the process faster, more efficient and more cost-effective.
With the launch of the Rare Treatment Accelerator, Healx and partnering patient groups will be able to scale the impact of this approach by leveraging the power of AI and combining their knowledge, information and expertise so that, together, they can discover new treatments and move them towards the clinic within 24 months.
Healx Co-Founder and CEO Dr Tim Guilliams, said: “The size of this Series B financing, especially this quickly after our Series A round last year, is an endorsement of the value of our platform and the pace at which we have developed. It allows us to scale our impact with the launch of our Rare Treatment Accelerator programme and to progress into clinical trials.
“The trials for our fragile X treatments are just the start of the impact we believe our technology is capable of having on drug discovery. Rare diseases affect over 400 million patients world-wide. Of the 7,000 rare diseases known today, 95% are still without an approved treatment.
Irina Haivas, Principal at Atomico and board member of Healx, added: “The current, expensive, trial-and-error-based model of drug discovery hasn’t changed in a century.
“Healx has shown that doesn’t have to be the case, by combining AI with world-class pharmacological expertise and putting patients first. We believe that the new paradigm in drug discovery will emerge at the intersection of technology, data, and biology, and we’re confident that Healx’s team is paving the way to a new gold standard in rare disease treatment discovery.”
This Series B round follows a $10 million Series A round in 2018.