The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Dundee drug discovery firm gets $525m boost
Dundee life sciences firm Exscientia has access to more than $525 million after its latest fundraising round.
The Dundee University spin-out company uses artificial intelligence (AI) to design drugs.
Its latest funding round raised $225m, with an additional $300m available from Softbank at Exscientia’s discretion.
Chief executive Andrew Hopkins said the investment would be used to expand the firm’s drug pipeline and discovery capabilities.
He said: “All of our investors share Exscientia’s vision to discover better drugs, faster, through AI and automation.
“Our patient-first
AI platform has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to precision-design drugs that address patients’ needs,” he said.
“The quality and depth of our shareholder base allows us the freedom to continue to scale both our platform and pipeline.”
Exscientia uses AI across its platform to precision engineer new medicines.
It has advanced two fully Ai-designed drugs into clinical trials and has more than 20 active programmes in its pipeline.
The company continues to have a base in Dundee in the Dundee One building at City Quay.
It also has offices in Oxford, Miami, and Osaka in Japan.
It employs more than 100 people from 20 nations.
Softbank led the Series D fundraising round and was joined by previous round lead investors, Novo Holdings and Blackrock.
Eric Chen, managing partner of Softbank Investment Advisers, said: “We believe Exscientia’s innovative use of AI to discover and design better quality drugs with greater efficiency has the potential to create important medicines faster than ever before.
“With the convergence of technology and biology, drug discovery is rapidly evolving in ways that will reshape the industry,” he added.
“The Exscientia team have been leaders in Aibased drug discovery since the field’s inception and we believe they will continue shaping its future,” he said.
Drug design is precision engineering at the molecular scale.
Exscientia’s systems efficiently learn from the widest range of data and consistently reapply enhanced knowledge.
It means Exscientia’s AI platform learns more effectively and rapidly than human-led efforts alone.
Exscientia believes that designing better drugs, faster, will allow the best ideas of science to rapidly become the best medicines for patients.
To date, the company has been able to advance seven precision-designed drugs from project initiation to development candidate in an average time of 12 months.
The firm’s last funding round in March raised another $100m.
Exscientia has doubled in size over the past year and expects to double again in 2021.
Mr Hopkins will participate in the Biodundee conference next month.