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Cambridge knowledge firm Qureight has raised £1.5million in seed funding to develop what’s described because the world’s solely AI-powered platform devoted to complicated illnesses.
The know-how has the potential to cut back dramatically the prices of bringing life-saving medication to the market and shorten scientific trials.
Qureight – a play on the phrase curate – is led by CEO Dr Muhunthan Thillai, who can be a lung specialist at Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, whereas its chief scientific officer is Dr Alessandro Ruggiero, who can be a radiology advisor within the metropolis.
Qureight CEO Dr Muhunthan Thillai, left, and CSO Dr Alessandro Ruggiero
Its imaginative and prescient is to accommodate the world’s largest assortment of information from complicated illnesses.
Using proprietary know-how, its platform allows scientists to trace illness development and drug response in sufferers with complicated illnesses. This helps to develop distinctive biomarkers to be used in scientific trials.
With the £200million-plus price of every part III pharmaceutical research into a fancy illness, the potential of the know-how to enhance the effectivity of scientific trials has proved of curiosity to buyers, with Playfair Capital main the spherical and participation from Life Sciences funds Meltwind, Ascension and Cambridge Angels.
The firm’s seed funding additionally comes within the week it’s named within the #21toWatch awards shortlist, as we report this week.
One of Qureight’s first targets is idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a situation wherein the lungs turn out to be scarred and respiratory turns into more and more troublesome.
The firm says final 12 months it was the primary in Europe to combine complicated knowledge units and software program algorithms exploring lung scarring in Covid-19 sufferers.
The pioneering work confirmed adjustments in blood distribution throughout the lungs throughout Covid an infection might partly clarify why sufferers have such low blood oxygen ranges. The discovering might assist result in new strategies of treating Covid sufferers by focusing on the lung’s blood provide.
Dr Thillai demonstrated on the current European Respiratory Society International Congress in Madrid that automated picture evaluation from CT scans of the lungs, together with scientific knowledge, can be utilized to trace the development of sufferers with lung scarring because the situation will get worse and the illness progresses.
“Existing therapies for lung fibrosis are expensive and scientific trials to seek out new medication are sometimes very massive – needing many sufferers to search for an consequence,” he stated.
“Qureight’s platform know-how will permit biopharma corporations to recruit fewer sufferers for scientific trials and extra exactly goal the proper of sufferers – saving cash and producing higher outcomes with a personalised method to drug improvement.”
The platform is designed to allow corporations to handle, curate and post-process scientific knowledge in a single place.
Users can add imaging and biomarker knowledge, and rework scientific data into structured task-ready knowledge. Proprietary instruments are used for evaluation and AI software program options might be deployed for modelling.
Qureight, based mostly in Nine Hills Road, already has different targets lined up.
Dr Ruggiero defined: “Our subsequent targets are pulmonary hypertension and hostile drug results in complicated lung most cancers sufferers. This funding will permit us to make use of our platform to work with our biopharma companions to speed up drug improvement in these areas.”
Playfair Capital investor Jeevan Sunner stated: “The world-leading scientific experience of co- founders Dr Thillai and Dr Ruggiero has been essential in Qureight’s improvement of the world’s solely AI-powered platform devoted to complicated illnesses.
“The know-how presents an unrivalled built-in and safe resolution for managing, analysing and sharing scientific knowledge – and is ready to remodel the structuring of scientific trials and finally the therapy of sufferers.”
Read extra
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