From left: Nuritas CEO Emmet Browne with founder and chief science officer Dr Nora Khaldi. Image: Kieran Harnett
The efforts of Nuritas to fuse artificial intelligence and genomics are set to go global with the closing of €16m in new funding.
Not long after Nuritas founder and chief science officer Dr Nora Khaldi was included in Siliconrepublic.com’s Sci-Tech 100 list of innovators, her company achieved a major win with the closing of its largest funding round to date.
Nuritas confirmed that it has secured €16m in Series A funding led by Chicago-based Cultivian Sandbox Ventures, bringing its total investment to date to approximately €25m.
Nuritas boasts some pretty well-known funders from previous rounds, including Bono and The Edge from U2, and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.
The company has made remarkable strides since it was launched in 2014 to use the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to discover new peptides for use in health, wellness and the pharmaceutical industry.
This latest funding, Nuritas said, will support its global growth to address and solve many of the most pressing health issues of the day, particularly the sharp rise in diabetes.
Team to grow
According to the International Diabetes Federation, an estimated 352m individuals globally are living with pre-diabetes, which is considered an early warning sign for diabetes.
An estimated 34m pre-diabetics globally move on to develop full blown diabetes each year. In the EU alone, 36m people are estimated to have pre-diabetes.
“Bioactive peptides are known to play a role in managing diabetes and many other areas, but the current methods of identifying those that may work is time-consuming, inefficient and expensive,” said Nuritas CEO Emmet Browne.
Khaldi said of the funding: “This investment will not only help us accelerate our route to market, explore new disease areas and grow our already strong team, but it will also push us even further in extracting the great potential of what our technology is capable of creating.
“What is so exciting is that the inflammation ingredient launching in the US next year is actually the first healthcare ingredient that has been fully discovered through the use of AI.”
Earlier this year, the Inspirefest 2016 speaker took home the ‘Rising Star’ prize at the Tech Excellence Awards for bringing groundbreaking technological development and research to the world’s stage with Nuritas.
