Healx

Everything changed for drug discovery wizard Dr David Brown and PhD biophysicist Dr Tim Guilliams when they came across the story of Matt Might, an American entrepreneur whose persistence resulted in his disabled, sick son being diagnosed with a completely new, rare disease.

There are currently around 7,000 rare diseases, affecting 400 million people in the world — a group as large as the population of the USA — 50% of which are children. These conditions are often chronic and life threatening, and the vast majority have a genetic component. Only 5% have a treatment.

David and Tim saw how the medical profession had let Matt down, and realized that Matt and his son were not alone: the traditional drug discovery model does not serve rare disease patients.

Traditional drug discovery is predominantly focused on blockbuster drugs for prevalent, well-known diseases; it’s expensive, risky and takes many years which rare disease patients don’t have. Using the commercial model, it typically takes 12–15 years with a price tag of between $2–3bn and a failure rate of 95% to develop a drug.

That’s why they founded Healx. The company’s mission is to improve the lives of rare disease patients by using AI to accelerate the discovery and development of treatments at scale.

Combining innovative technology, deep pharmacological expertise and extensive patient engagement, Healx has developed the world’s most comprehensive AI-based drug discovery platform for rare diseases. They’ve named it Healnet, and they can use it to move towards clinical trials for new treatments 80% faster, 80–90% cheaper and with a greater chance of success than conventional drug discovery methods.