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1st December 2022

YFM and Maven lead £6.5m Series A into deep tech AI company, Biorelate

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Greater Manchester LEPNorthern Powerhouse Investment FundNPIF - Maven Equity Finance

Maven Capital Partners (“Maven”) and YFM Equity Partners (“YFM”), today announce the completion of a £6.5m Series A investment for Biorelate.

Founded in 2014 and led by Daniel Jamieson (Founder and CEO), Biorelate curates dark biomedical knowledge to empower drug discovery with its proprietary AI platform, Galactic AI™. Galactic AI’s innovative technology uniquely combines natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) to capture highly valuable biomedical data that pharmaceutical and life sciences organisations need to improve decision making in their drug discovery programs.

As drug discovery becomes increasingly more difficult to turn a profit, biopharmaceutical companies are investing more into AI and data-driven solutions that improve the chances of success. These same approaches can also be instrumental in finding entirely new hypotheses, unforeseen by human experts. Biorelate are helping on both fronts by capturing billions of biomedical datapoints not found in existing databases that they use to form a more complete map of scientific research. They then use this to support biopharma companies with target, biomarker and other related drug discovery challenges. Since launching Galactic AI™ in 2020, Biorelate has experienced significant growth and has brought on board leading global companies such as AstraZeneca and Idorsia, as well as a host of other undisclosed names.

The funding was raised through YFM’s British Smaller Companies VCTs, the Maven VCTs TriplePoint VCT, with continued investment from NPIF – Maven Equity Finance, which is managed by Maven and part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund as well as a group of angel investors from the Manchester Tech Trust. Biorelate will use the investment to increase its commercial and technical capacity, as well as wider expansion into the US to tap into the industry’s largest market.

Gavin Bell, Investment Director led the deal for Maven. The YFM team included Andy Thomas, Aaron Lowery and Ian Waterfield.

Other advisers on the deal included: Craig Corporate, Sales Blueprint, Pannone Corporate, The Startup Factory, Catalysis, Lockton, Shoosmiths, Philip Hare & Associates, CMS and Hadley Appenine.

Dan Jamieson, founder and CEO of Biorelate, said: ”Drug discovery is so exciting right now, as there are just so many incredible companies working on remarkable new therapeutics. Equally, we are at time where there is a stupendous amount of untapped evidence, like cause-and-effect, sat dark and subsequently unused by these same companies. Our mission at Biorelate is to capture this untapped data and help them make sense of it. With this improved understanding we are empowering these companies to make better decisions and speed up the drug discovery process.”

Gavin Bell, Investment Director at Maven, said: “Biorelate has grown significantly since we first backed the business at an early stage through NPIF Maven Equity Finance. It’s an exciting, innovative deep tech business born in Manchester and now developing globally. We’re absolutely delighted to continue to support the vision and ambition of Dan and the Biorelate team, to scale and capitalise on the attractive global growth opportunities.

Andy Thomas, Partner at YFM Equity Partners, said: “By quickly and effectively processing the growing and evolving swathe of publicly available biomedical data, Biorelate has the ability to be at the forefront of innovation in the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry. We are excited to be part of the next step in the business’ journey, and see huge potential for continued growth and expansion.”

Sean Hutchinson at the British Business Bank, said: “We are pleased that the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund is continuing to unlock the North’s growth potential through ambitious businesses like Biorelate, that is making a profound difference in its industry. Its growth is a step forward for the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry, and NPIF is proud to have facilitated its development.”

The Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund project is supported financially by the European Union using funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020 and the European Investment Bank.

The Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund project is supported financially by the European Union using funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020 and the European Investment Bank.

Maven Capital Partners UK LLP is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, Firm Reference Number 495929.

 

 

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