Forbes reports that Healx, a British biotech startup, is using the power of artificial intelligence to find new uses for existing drugs that treat rare diseases.
“Healx combines AI technology, pharmacology expertise and patient group insights to accelerate treatments for rare diseases. Our technology platform allows us to predict therapies with significantly higher accuracy and safety, much faster than conventional approaches. We are changing the whole model,” said Dr Tim Guilliams, CEO and co-founder of Healx.
With comprehensive rare disease knowledge as a base, the AI-platform named HealNet would be able to find suitable therapies much faster than conventional approaches.
The founders were inspired to create Healx after witnessing how the traditional drug discovery model was flawed and letting rare disease patients down.
According to Dr. Guilliams-
“It is heavily focused on blockbuster drugs for large disease populations, typically taking 12-15 years and about $1.8 billion to develop them. Unfortunately, this commercial model is not a viable option for rare diseases, as it would take above $13 trillion and thousands of years of research to develop potential treatments for 7,000 diseases.
Their mission is to use HealNet to find cure for 100 rare diseases by the year 2025.
