Sofinnova adds a digital medicine string to its VC bow

Life sciences venture capital company Sofinnova has launched a new strategy in digital medicine, accompanied by a series of investments in start-ups operating within the category.

The new unit – headed by partners Edward Kliphuis and Simon Turner – will focus on emerging companies “at the intersection of biology, data and computation” and help them build scale, said the firm, which currently has around €2.5 billion invested across its portfolio.

Digital medicine now adds to Sofinnova’s strategic focus, alongside funds targeted at start-up and follow-on biopharma and medtech therapies, a medtech accelerator, industrial biotech ventures, and early-stage projects in the area of rare genetic disorders.

The digital medicine strategy is the first of its kind in Europe, according to Sofinnova, which has also announced its first investments in the category – with UK-based BioCorteX, Germany’s deepc and Kiro of France.

London’s BioCorteX has received $5 million in seed funding to help develop its “Carbon Mirror” platform, used to model the interactions between the patient, their microbiome, and treatment through the application of physics, chemistry and computational techniques.

The aim is to help predict an individual’s response to a treatment – based on their microbiome profile – in the hope of making therapy more effective and personalised, improving clinical trial design and the development of new medicines.

Sofinnova has also contributed to and led a €12 million Series A round for Munich-based deepc, which has developed a cloud-based operating system – dubbed deepcOS – that is used to aggregate and coordinate artificial intelligence (AI) tools used in radiology departments.

The cash injection will be used to expand deepc’s geographic reach and develop additional features for the software platform.

Kiro meanwhile has raised €13.8 million in another Sofinnova-led Series A, the proceeds of which will be deployed in developing its AI platform that aims to make lab test results more relevant to doctors and more understandable to patients.

The platform, trained on more than 26 million lab reports, is intended to assist doctors by detecting disease onset very early on so treatment can begin as quickly as possible and help patients understand their clinical lab results over time. It already has more than 150,000 active users.

“Like all the funds on Sofinnova’s platform of strategies, Sofinnova Digital Medicine will focus on developing the most promising innovations that address systemic challenges in healthcare and can profoundly improve the lives of patients worldwide,” said the VC.