AI-driven drug repurposing company Healx Ltd (Cambridge, UK) raises US$56m in a Series B financing and launches global accelerator programme for orphan diseases.

The financing was led by Atomico and joined by Intel Capital, Global Brain and btov Partners as new investors. Existing investors from a US$10m Series A round, including Balderton Capital, Amadeus Capital Partners, and Jonathan Milner, also participated in the round.

Healx anounced that the proceeds will be used to build a clinical-stage portfolio of drug candidates for rare diseases, including treatments for fragile X syndrome, a heritable cause of autism. The company uses an artificial intelligence (AI) approach named Healnet to identify clinic-ready new treatments for rare diseases from existing, market-approved drugs within 24 months. Upon the announcement of the financing, Healx launched a Rare Treatment Accelerator programme in partnership with patient communities aimed at rapidly repurposing drugs for application in the rare disease field. Healnet is a blackbox AI approach, integegrating data from publications, clinical trials outcomes and “proprietary biomedical data” such as Disease Gene Expression Matching in the form of a graph that correlates the drug with potential therapeutic applications.

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