The explosion of new data regarding the biology of disease has far outpaced the human ability to consume and make sense of it which is creating a challenge for scientists working to translate biomedical data into new treatments. Uncovering potential new therapeutic indications for drugs powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) is still rare in today’s drug development process.
It is known that drugs have been successfully repurposed for rare diseases in the past, but this has typically happened late in the development process and not in a systematic manner. Systematic drug repurposing started in the early stages of drug development, could identify and accelerate new treatments for diseases with unmet medical needs.
To help in the process, Mayo Clinic www.mayoclinic.org and nference http://nference.ai have launched a startup company for drug development that will be powered by clinical expertise and AI.
The startup company named Qrativ (pronounced cure-a-tiv) http://qrativ.bio will combine nference’s AI-driven knowledge synthesis platform with Mayo Clinic’s medical expertise and clinical data. Qrativ seeks to discover and develop treatments for diseases.
This effort is being boosted by an $8.3 million Series A financing supported by Matrix Capital Management https://matrixcmg.com, Matrix Partners, and Mayo Clinic. Qrativ’s initial focus will be on rare diseases and highly targeted patient populations.
“Qrativ will combine clinical insight and clinical need from Mayo Clinic with robust informatics capabilities,” said Andrew Badley, MD., Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer at Qrativ. “By taking into account genomic predictors of both desired treatment response and unwanted toxicity, Qrativ will be able to identify potential drug candidates more swiftly.”
Qrativ will be led by Murali Aravamudan, Dr. Andrew Bradley, Venky Soundararajan PhD, Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Qratriv and nference, and Agustin Lopex Marquex, Vice President, for Business Development and Marketing for Qrativ and nference.
Mayo Clinic and Dr. Andrew Badley have a financial interest in Qrativ. Mayo Clinic will use any revenue it receives to support their not-for-profit mission in patient care education, and research.