HealthTech Healx Raise $10m to Accelerate Drug Discovery, Prior to Speaking at Orphan Drugs and Rare Diseases Conference

London, United Kingdom, August 16, 2018 --(PR.com)-- Healx, a HealthTech company based in Cambridge who are also set to speak at this year’s Orphan Drugs and Rare Diseases conference in October in London, have announced a $10m (£7.6m) Series A funding round. The company's primary focuses include using AI to develop treatments for rare diseases, cutting down the time it takes to get drugs into market, finding new uses for existing drugs and their application in combination therapies.

Patients with rare diseases cannot continue to be overlooked because of costly therapies and have the same rights to treatment as any other patient. Dr David Brown, one of the company's founders, stated, “The traditional drug discovery process takes 10 to 15 years at a cost of $2 billion per new drug and with a failure rate of 95% – it’s broken, it’s slow, it’s high failure, and it’s not economic for rare diseases. Healx is showing that we can massively transform the rate of discovery of new medicines, reducing timelines and costs.”*

The orphan drugs market has seen a huge growth in interest from pharmaceutical companies and biotechs, as a growing need for effective, long-term treatment for rare disease patients becomes a priority. Companies like Healx are paving the way to success by repurposing existing drugs, meaning fewer complex trials, less expenditure, and a quicker timeline.

This year's 8th annual Orphan Drugs and Rare Diseases conference, taking place 17 - 18 October in London, will be hosting Healx's Head of Business Development Michale Bouskila-Chubb, who is set to present on "Accelerating drug discovery for rare diseases using AI: The Healx Model."

Michale will be focusing on fragile X case study: the case for AI-driven drug repurposing vs conventional drug repurposing, setting up an online tool to share data: how patient groups can accelerate data access and data quality for their rare diseases, and translating repurposed drugs to pharma: how we can build viable commercial cases for the pharmaceutical industry.

At this year’s two-day conference, delegates will be able to hear from Healx and many more industry leaders, including Sobi, MHR AstraZeneca, Genetic Alliance and more.

2018 Conference Highlights:

· Discuss the pricing and reimbursement of orphan drugs
· Understand the challenges of patient recruitment and patient-centric research
· Hear the MHRA’s perspective on benefit-risk assessment in rare diseases
· Explore the clinical development of orphan drugs for rare diseases
· Gain insight into potential synergies between regulators, non-profits and pharmaceutical companies

The conference’s last early bird saving of £200 expires on August 31st and delegates are urged to book soon to join an unrivalled gathering of international expert speakers and industry professionals for 5+ hours of pure networking. Visit the website to download the full speaker interviews, see the agenda and keep up to date with the latest developments at http://www.orphandrugs.co.uk/prcom

*uktech.news

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