Antidote Technologies Raises $11M In Funding Round Led By Merck
UK-based clinical trial matching platform, Antidote Technologies, has raised £11m in a funding round led by Merck Global Health Innovation Fund (GHI) and joined by existing investors Smedvig Capital and Octopus Ventures.
The firm expects to be able to accelerate the development of capabilities for its trial matching platform – including precision medicine and EHR matching. Regulatory clearances still need to come through, but that’s expected to happen later this year.
Antidote is run by a group of European tech executives, including Pablo Graiver, a former vice president of Kayak, and Eze Vidra, a general partner for Google’s venture arm in Europe. The company is now based in New York City to help it expand more deeply into the United States.
A lot of clinical trials are delayed or closed because of a lack of patients taking part; Antidote estimates the number at about 80 percent. The company wants to put a dent in those numbers by changing the way patients and researchers connect. With its clinical and AI prowess, Antidote has created Match, a clinical trial matching platform currently serving around 180 patient communities – JDRF, Lung Cancer Alliance, and Healthline among
them – bringing new studies to millions of patients on a monthly basis.The fresh injection of cash, which brings its total amount of funding to $26m, will allow the digital health start-up to accelerate the development of its trial matching platform and reach “millions more patients in need of new and better treatments”.
Antidote Match is based on generating structured eligibility criteria, proprietary algorithms, and machine learning. To date, the company has made 14,000 clinical trials matchable and plans to reach full coverage of US trials next year with enhanced capabilities, such as matching cancer patients to studies using mutation-level data. The company is already a participant in the Cancer Moonshot project.
“We are excited to back Antidote given the company’s focus on solving the critical issue of matching patients with the right clinical trials,” said Francesca Wuttke, managing director at Merck GHI. “We think the Antidote approach fits well with our focus on investing in companies that play a critical role in the new digital clinical trial management ecosystem.”
“We couldn’t wish for a better endorsement of Antidote’s high-scale ecosystem approach to patient engagement than this round led by Merck GHI, a fund that has a deep understanding of the problem we are solving,” said Antidote founder and CEO Pablo Graiver in a statement. “We are also grateful for the continued support from Octopus Ventures and Smedvig Capital. Antidote is excited to embark on the next stage of transforming medical research to deliver new treatments faster to the people who need them.”
