A Scottish firm aiming to "digitise chemistry" and help speed up the development of new medicines has secured £36 million in funding.
It is claimed Chemify, a University of Glasgow-spin-out, can help reduce the amount of costly and time-consuming experimentation required to discover promising new molecules, speeding up their development as products to underpin advances in medicine, farming, materials science, and green energy.
The company is looking to provide pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and industrial partners with “better molecules”.
It announce funding including a Series A led by Triatomic Capital, joined by new investors including Hong-Kong based Horizon Ventures, US-based Rocketship Ventures, Possible Ventures, Alix Ventures, Scotland-based Eos, and the UK Government Innovation Accelerator program.
Existing investor BlueYard Capital also participated in the round.
READ MORE: Planning application submitted for new £700 million Scots hospital
Chemify said it is “based on decades of chemistry research, robotics, AI, and conceptual advancements” from Cronin’s Digital Chemistry Laboratory at the University of Glasgow. It was founded in 2019 by Professor Lee Cronin, chief executive, with backing from David Cleevely, co-founder of Abcam.
Professor Cronin’s research spans the digitisation of chemistry including the use of artificial intelligence in chemistry to explore chemical space with the trillions of possible combinations of natural elements.
The professor said: “It has long been our dream to digitize chemistry, and I’m delighted that through this funding, Chemify is building a company that can design, make, and discover complex molecules on demand using digital blueprints on demand faster, more efficiently, and safely than is currently possible.
"Our mission is to deliver better molecules for pharmaceutical and industrial partners in a fraction of the time and cost currently required.”
READ MORE: 'Huge potential' as Aberdeen study shows AI detects missed breast cancers
Chemify spun out from the University of Glasgow in March 2022 and has "built a world-class team to commercialise the digitisation of chemistry".
The underlying technology was designed and developed by Professor Cronin and his team at the Mazumdar-Shaw Advanced Research Centre.
With over £25m invested in the foundational research behind Chemify, the team developed a new digital chemical approach to program chemistry.
Chemify said its vision is to build the infrastructure to “digitise chemistry and enable the execution of chemical code for drug discovery, chemical synthesis, and materials discovery”.
READ MORE: Could this robot with 'electronic skin' change how we nurse?
It said it is” creating a digital chemical future where the access to important molecules, drugs, and new materials, currently unimaginable, are instantly accessible”.
The company said: “Chemify’s aim is to radically increase the speed of innovation, solving problems and generating new chemical technologies for the benefit of humanity.”
Alister Jack, Secretary of State for Scotland, said it was “fascinating to visit the University of Glasgow and hear about all the excellent work they are doing”.
He said: “ The UK Government is backing the UK science, technology, and innovation sectors with record levels of funding including £33 million towards the Glasgow City Region (GCR) Innovation Accelerator (IA).
"The new funding announced today by Chemify, Ltd, which is one of the projects supported by the GCR IA, is a great example of our levelling up agenda in action with the public and private sectors working together to help unlock further funding, a clear demonstration of Scotland's vital role in keeping the UK at the forefront of global science and research."
Steve Hochberg, Triatomic Capital, said: “We are excited to be leading the series A in Chemify focusing on delivering digital-chemical solutions to many partners where molecular design and manufacturing is a critical bottleneck.”
George Freeman, Minister of State at the new Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, said: “To ensure we meet our ambition of being a science superpower by 2030, we need better commercialisation of UK innovation. With the right backing, we can make a success of spinning-out businesses in every part of the country.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here