A Belfast biotech company has raised £900,000 to help develop new drug products using its AI discovery platform.
AMPLY Discovery, a spinout from Queens University Belfast, focuses on helping solve the challenges posed by antimicrobial resistance which can render antibiotics ineffective against bacteria, viruses and fungi. It is using AI and machine-learning techniques to discover new anti-infective products and is currently developing an anti-infective product to tackle bovine mastitis, for which it has received funding from Innovate UK.
Established 2021 by researchers in the School of Biological Science at Queen’s AMPLY Discovery’s technology platform has been the subject of more than eight years of scientific research.
The company has raised further funding to support its development programmes through equity investment from Co-fund NI, which is managed by Clarendon Fund Managers and supported by Invest NI and the British Business Bank, the QUBIS Innovation Fund, the Helix Way Partnership, and angel investment from members of the Halo Business Angel Network (HBAN).
“It is exciting to be able to advance the commercial development of AMPLY Discovery thanks to the tremendous support of our investors and Queen’s University Belfast,” Dr Ben Thomas, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, said. “The development of initial research in this domain started out almost a decade ago when I considered adopting AI and machine learning techniques I had worked with in financial markets for the computational biology domain.”
Dermot Tierney, Chief Commercial Officer and Co-Founder, welcomed the investment.
“This latest funding milestone is a significant achievement for AMPLY Discovery and will allow us to target significant commercial opportunities for new anti-infective products starting with bovine mastitis.”
