UK-based iLoF gets €4 million shot to improve personalised drug discovery

Oxford-based digital health company iLoF  has raised $4.1 million in a seed funding. The round was led by Fab and saw the participation of US-based M12, Microsoft’s venture fund, Quiet Capital, Lunar Ventures, Alter Venture Partners, re.Mind Capital, and Fluxunit, and angel investor Charlie Songhurst. The company has also secured a $900,000 grant from ERDF. It has raised $8 million in funding to date.

The funding will speed up ongoing engagements with global corporations in the pharmaceutical, biotech, and clinical space to fast-track current and future pilots. 

Founded by Mehak Mumtaz and Luis Valente, the AI platform accelerates the future of personalised drug discovery and development. Through advanced AI and photonics, iLoF collects massive amounts of data to build a digital library of biomarkers and biological profiles. According to the company, this in turn enables biotech firms and pharmaceutical companies to make clinical trials faster, cheaper, and patient-centric.

Luis Valente, co-founder and CEO of iLoF said: “For hundreds of years, treatments have been developed with the assumption they will work for everyone. However, each person is different, and for many severe diseases such as Alzheimer’s, multiple factors can contribute to the effectiveness of a treatment on a given patient. This means millions of patients live without access to an effective, disease-modifying treatment – which sparked the vision behind iLoF. We collect vast amounts of data to create digital twins of biological profiles and disease subtypes, which we store in our digital library. Different patient profiles can be selected and screened using our platform to speed up the development of effective and personalised treatments while enabling humane, patient-centric clinical trials.”

Mehak Mumtaz, co-founder and COO of iLoF added: “Our ultimate vision is to go from a next-generation bioinformatics platform to a breakthrough disease screening one. Moving from supporting researchers and scientists to directly helping patients worldwide will vastly deepen our understanding of diseases and help physicians detect the world’s more severe and impactful diseases, such as Ovarian Cancer or Alzheimer’s Disease.”

Sofia Santos, partner at Faber, added: “iLoF has the potential to positively impact millions of patients around the globe and become an integral part of the $500 billion global personalised medicine market. Its unique combination of photonics and artificial intelligence can directly impact the fast-growing AI in drug discovery market.”