Published: Sep 18, 2018
Focus:
NPIF Maven Equity Finance
NPIF Maven Equity Finance, has invested £200,000 as part of a £700,000 funding round in Biorelate, a technology platform using artificial intelligence (AI) to efficiently curate data in biomedicine. Existing investors, Catapult Ventures via the Greater Manchester and Cheshire Life Sciences Fund, provided £150,000 and the Manchester Tech Trust Angels (MTTA) provided £350,000. The funding will be used to grow Biorelate's team and to develop its product offering, including three new SaaS products.
Founded in 2014, Biorelate uses existing knowledge to help scientists solve difficult biomedical challenges, enabling smarter and faster research and development. The company’s technology uses AI to curate data and information that’s relevant to biomedical concepts from published literature such as journals, patents and clinical trials.
Biorelate’s technology combines natural language processing and AI with human expert curation to generate highly relevant output from unstructured big data. Uses of Biorelate’s technology include curation and exploration of unused sources of knowledge of molecular mechanisms for drug discovery, tracking specific biomedical developments, expertise sourcing and competitive intelligence.
The business was founded by Daniel Jamieson while completing his PhD at the University of Manchester after successfully prototyping a highly efficient and accurate method of disease curation. The business is experiencing strong demand for its services, including a recent collaboration deal signed with an AIM listed drug-discovery specialist. As CEO, Jamieson has a background in biology and bioinformatics and is supported by a highly skilled and dedicated senior management team.
NPIF - Maven Equity Finance has, since its launch, invested £12 million in dynamic growth businesses across the Northern Powerhouse region, driving economic prosperity and supporting the creation of over 200 jobs. Maven works with five Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) and Combined Authorities in the North West to invest between £50,000 and £2 million to support the growth of innovative and ambitious businesses across a wide range of sectors and in a variety of funding scenarios.
Gavin Bell, Investment Manager at Maven, said: “We’ve been impressed with Biorelate’s ability to generate growing demand from quality customers, in a short space of time. We can see the advantages of leveraging Biorelate’s technology, to derive bespoke data-driven insights from the vast array of published biomedical information. We are very much looking forward to working with Dan and the team through the next stage of their journey.”
Dr Daniel Jamieson, CEO at Biorelate said: “We are building a technology platform to extract more value from data in science texts, 80% of which is unused. Our initial focus is in working with companies in the very early stages of drug discovery to help them make better use of this data on the path to producing viable new treatments. I’m absolutely thrilled to have Maven and the MTTA on board for this journey and to have the amazing Catapult Ventures team commit further.”
Grant Peggie, Director at British Business Bank said: “ Greater Manchester has a thriving healthcare sector, with state-of-the-art facilities available that enable the development and testing of new drugs and technologies. Biorelate has the potential to tap into the huge market both in the UK and overseas and provide innovative solutions that will support other businesses in the biomedicine space.”
The Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund project is supported financially by the European Union using funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020 and the European Investment Bank.
