“Our ultimate vision is to go from a next-generation bioinformatics platform to a breakthrough disease screening one”
The Funding
Based in both Porto and Lisbon, the biotech startup is revolutionising approaches to future healthcare. This new capital injection is comprised of about €4 million dollars in equity investment led by Faber, alongside US-based M12, Microsoft’s venture fund and Quiet Capital, and EU-based Lunar Ventures, Alter Venture Partners, re.Mind Capital and Fluxunit, the corporate VC arm of ams OSRAM. Angel investor Charlie Songhurst, former GM at Microsoft, and Berggruen Holdings, the family office of Nicolas Berggruen, a serial investor and philanthropist, also participated.
Creating a digital library of biomarkers
Founded in 2019, iLoF has developed a digital library of disease biomarkers and biological profiles, and it is enabling biotechs and pharmaceutical companies to make clinical trials faster, cheaper and more patient-centric. The platform pulls together massive amounts of data to build a library of biological profiles, bringing together world-class physicists, biologists, and data scientists to get life-saving personalized treatments to patients faster.
Luis Valente, Co-Founder and CEO, explained: “We collect vast amounts of data to create digital twins of biological profiles and disease subtypes, which we store in our digital library. Different patient profiles can be selected and screened using our platform to speed up the development of effective and personalized treatments while enabling humane, patient-centric clinical trials.”
The platform amasses a wide range of optical signals, creating rich signatures of the ensemble of particles on biological samples, which are then converted into bio-digital twins. These bio-digital twins overcome the traditional limits of biochemical analysis, in which they can be re-analyzed a potentially infinite number of times. This supercharges the search for emergent features and patterns that could be the key to developing various novel therapeutics.
The plans
Mehak Mumtaz, Co-Founder and COO of iLoF: “Our ultimate vision is to go from a next-generation bioinformatics platform to a breakthrough disease screening one. Moving from supporting researchers and scientists to directly helping patients around the world will vastly deepen our understanding of diseases and help physicians detect the world’s more severe and impactful diseases, such as Ovarian Cancer or Alzheimer’s Disease.”
Having effectively demonstrated the value and importance of the iLoF platform, the startup is now wanting to scale up its operations. The Seed funding will be used to accelerate ongoing engagements with leading global corporations in the Pharmaceutical, Biotech, and Clinical space, with the aim of fast-tracking current and future pilots, enabling the further development of the iLoF Platform.
News – July 28, 2022
