Balderton 
- Portfolio News
- 12 September, 2024
Healx, an AI-enabled clinical-stage biotech company specializing in rare diseases announced it has raised a $47 million in Series C round. The Series C round was co-led by Silicon Valley-based R42 Group and Atomico with participation from new and existing investors including Balderton, Jonathan Milner, Global Brain, btov, Ayana Capital, o2h and VU Venture Partners.
Proceeds of the financing will be used to advance the company’s pipeline of medicines in rare oncology, renal and neurodevelopmental disorders, including advancing its lead program HLX1502 through a Phase 2 clinical trial for the treatment of neurofibromatosis Type 1 (NF1). In conjunction with the financing, Stanford Medicine Adjunct Professor Ronjon Nag, Ph.D., founder of R42 Group and 2024 Silicon Valley Hall of Fame AI inductee, joins the board of Healx.
It is truly a pivotal time at Healx. By December 2024, we will advance HLX-1502 into a Phase 2 clinical trial in patients with NF1 both for plexiform neurofibroma, a genetic condition with limited treatment options and for cutaneous neurofibroma, for which there are no FDA approved options. We are also generating important preclinical data for multiple additional compounds identified using our novel generative AI drug discovery engine. Those compounds target rare diseases with significant unmet needs, including additional nerve-related tumor disorders, autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease and neurodevelopmental disorders such as Angelman Syndrome.
Tim Guilliams, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO, Healx
The Healx drug discovery pipeline is powered by Healnet, an AI-driven discovery platform designed to identify clinically de-risked therapeutic opportunities for rare diseases. Healnet incorporates recent advances in generative AI to find connections between biological and chemical entities that could be turned into new treatments.
Healx was co-founded in Cambridge (UK) by its chairman and Viagra co-inventor David Brown, Ph.D., and Tim Guilliams, Ph.D., with a mission to apply emerging technologies to speeding the discovery of rare disease treatments.
