Limerick’s Teckro raises $6m in round led by Founders Fund

8 Aug 2016

Teckro uses machine learning to reduce the time it takes drugs to pass clinical trials

Founders Fund, an early investor in Facebook, Stripe, SpaceX and Airbnb, has led a $6m Series A funding round in Teckro, a life sciences technology company based in Limerick.

Teckro uses information retrieval and machine-learning technologies to improve the speed and accuracy of clinical trials. The technology has already been adopted by a number of leading pharmaceutical companies.

“There’s a clear opportunity in modernising how clinical trials are run, and Teckro’s mobile-first solution is informed by a first-hand understanding of the challenges involved in conducting global clinical trials,” said Scott Nolan, partner at Founders Fund.

‘The funding we are announcing today validates our unique approach, and the growth potential of the company’
– GARY HUGHES, TECKRO

The latest round brings to $7.8m the amount of funding raised by Teckro to date.

Enterprise Ireland and private investors also participated in the round.

Making a difference through machine-learning technologies

Teckro partners with pharma and biotech companies to simplify the clinical development process, a major bottleneck in bringing effective and safe drugs to the market.

“We set out to make a difference, to make it easier for drug developers, research staff and patients to connect, and to simplify every interaction in the conduct of a clinical trial,” said Gary Hughes, CEO of Teckro.

“The funding will be used to expand our product development team as we continue to digitise clinical research services.”

“Fundamentally, the clinical trial landscape has changed and physicians struggle with the current method of conducting clinical trials. The funding we are announcing today validates our unique approach, and the growth potential of the company.”

Teckro was co-founded by Gary Hughes, Jacek Skryzpiec and Nigel Hughes. They were previously co-founders of Firecrest Clinical, which was acquired by Icon in 2011. Teckro is chaired by Peter Gray, former CEO of Icon, who is also chairman of UDG Healthcare and a director of Jazz Pharmaceuticals and Aptuit.

Limerick image via Shutterstock

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com