Healx Ltd raises $56m in Series B financing

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.

Healx and partnering patient groups said the Rare Treatment Accelerator programme will enable them to scale the impact of this approach so that, together, they can discover new treatments and move them towards the clinic within 24 months. The company announced it will soon publish validation data of its approach, which have been worked out with the FRAXA Research Foundation in Fragile X syndrome. The company expects further clinical programmes to be launched later in 2020. Healx has also said its ambition was to advance 100 rare disease treatments towards the clinic by 2025.

Irina Haivas, Principal at Atomico and board member of Healx, said that she believes that Healx’s approach towards drug discovery will be paving the way to a new gold standard in rare disease treatment discovery.