Sofinnova Partners, a European life sciences venture capital firm based in Paris, London, and Milan, has launched a new investment strategy focused on digital medicine.
The strategy, which has already seen Sofinnova Partners investing in biotech companies, will be headed by partners Edward Kliphuis and Simon Turner.
Sofinnova Digital Medicine will back entrepreneurs innovating at the cutting edge of technology and biology and help them scale to become global leaders. Sofinnova Digital Medicine will focus on developing the most promising innovations that address systemic challenges in healthcare and can improve the lives of patients worldwide.
Antoine Papiernik, chairman and managing partner of Sofinnova Partners, said: “Digital medicine is revolutionizing the healthcare industry. With our new partners, our network and our expertise across the healthcare continuum, we are uniquely positioned to help entrepreneurs develop digital products and services that will help patients, physicians and healthcare systems overall.”
Kliphuis, partner in the Sofinnova Digital Medicine Strategy, said: “Simon and I bring our extensive experience investing in and developing companies at the forefront of biological innovation coupled with powerful computational techniques to help founders achieve product-market fit and scale their companies globally.”
Turner, partner in the Sofinnova Digital Medicine Strategy, said: “We designed this strategy to help founders leverage our knowledge of highly-regulated, complex healthcare industries and build on the strengths of tech-industry approaches like rapid product iteration and swift commercialization. Sofinnova Digital Medicine will respond to the challenges of overburdended health systems with speed, agility, and a deep understanding of the patient journey.”
The launch of Sofinnova Digital Medicine marks the firm’s sixth and newest strategy in its multi-fund platform which spans the life sciences sector, from seed to later-stage investments in the most promising and disruptive technologies.
The company has also announced investment into three companies.
AI company Kiro raises €13.8 million
Kiro is a digital medicine company developing a platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to make lab test results more relevant to doctors and more understandable to patients.
It has raised €13.8 million ($15 million) in Series A funding, with a financing round led by Sofinnova Partners. Kiro is the first investment from Sofinnova Partners’ Digital Medicine Strategy.
Previous investors, Bpifrance, through its Fonds Ambition Amorcage Angels (F3A), and Kurma Partners, together with Propulia Capital, as well as European and U.S. entrepreneurs and business angels, also participated in the round.
Kiro’s innovative technology leverages AI and expertise in clinical biology to provide decision-making support that enables physicians to save time and focus more on individual patients’ needs. At the same time, the platform helps patients understand their results over time, so they can be more engaged in their own healthcare. The AI model was trained on more than 26 million lab reports to detect the early onset of diseases.
The new funding will help Kiro further develop its technology and platform, building off of strong product usage with more than 150,000 monthly active users to reinforce Kiro’s leadership position in France, expand commercial operations in Europe, and prepare entry into the U.S. market.
“More than 70% of healthcare decisions are based on laboratory test results, but this information remains highly under-leveraged. Kiro brings novel insights by standardizing and analyzing laboratory test results to drive an increased understanding of disease and patient outcomes,” said Kiro’s founder and CEO, Alexandre Guenoun.
$5 million for BioCorteX to unlock drug-bacteria interactions
BioCorteX, a digital medicine company that employs the Carbon Mirror platform, a first-principle computer simulation to understand drug-bacteria interactions and improve a person’s response to treatments, received $5 million seed funding round led by Sofinnova Partners and Hoxton Ventures.
To date, drug development largely ignores drug-bacteria interactions resulting in trials needlessly failing and a seemingly random response in people living with diseases. The funds will be used to further develop the company’s Carbon Mirror platform, which combines physics, chemistry and cutting-edge computational techniques, a melding of computer engineering, clinical insights and biology often referred to as “techbio.”
“The interaction between the microbiome and its host is complex and remains a challenging question that requires an entirely new approach,” said Nik Sharma, CEO and co-founder of BioCorteX.
“As a clinician, our technology aims to develop treatments that will change a person who does not respond into someone who does, so that people living with diseases have confidence in the outcome.”
deepc raises €12 million
deepc, a digital medicine pioneer that gives healthcare systems the flexibility to adopt and integrate third-party AI technology into existing workflows and ultimately improve patient outcomes, raised €12 million ($13.1 million) in a Series A round led by Sofinnova Partners, along with Bertelsmann Investments and existing investor Winning Mindset Ventures.
The proceeds will be used to propel the commercialization of the deepcOS AI operating system, and further develop streamlined services to improve the user experience for radiologists.
The company’s deepcOS, is a cloud-native, vendor-neutral platform that integrates seamlessly with existing radiology workflows. It provides approved third-party AI vendors with an efficient way to commercialize their solutions while offering hospitals and clinics a secure, “one-stop shop” for their AI-assisted radiology needs.