Lindus Health, “the anti-CRO” running radically faster, more reliable clinical trials, announced today it has raised £45m in Series B funding. The round was led by new investor Balderton Capital, with support from Visionaries Club and existing investors Creandum, Firstminute, and Seedcamp. The company is backed by a star-studded strategic advisory board, including Robert S. Langer, founder of Moderna and over 40 other biotechnology companies, and Tim Garnett, former CMO of Eli Lilly, amongst others.
As the only major provider offering fully integrated CRO services and in-house trial management technology, Lindus Health is uniquely positioned to leverage big data and AI. The £45m in new funding will allow the company to further develop their AI technology and eClinical platform, Citrus™, to optimise study design, automate central monitoring of study data, enable instant biostatistics, and more, as well as hiring in key areas including clinical operations and product development.
All new medical treatments must undergo rigorous testing through clinical trials, which are run by contract research organisations (CROs), to demonstrate that they are safe and effective. CROs are notorious for running trials over-time and over-budget – 85% of clinical trials are delayed – and the clinical research process has become exponentially slower and more expensive over the last two decades. The CRO industry has remained stagnant with extremely limited adoption of technology or modern approaches to streamline clinical development. This ultimately hinders the pace treatments can reach patients and drives up research and healthcare costs. From 2021 to 2022 alone, the cost of developing a single drug was estimated to have increased by almost £250m. These costs are passed on to patients in the form of higher drug prices and insurance premiums.
Lindus Health is disrupting the £90bn CRO industry with its tech-first “anti-CRO” approach, thanks to a combination of in-house technology and vertical integration of services. The company has leaned heavily into the power of AI and automation through their proprietary clinical trial software platform, Citrus™. It also built sophisticated methods for central patient recruitment and enabling new trial designs. This has resulted in massive efficiency gains, with clinical trials that are up to three times faster and produce demonstrably better quality trial data, ultimately setting the stage for greater scientific innovation and lower healthcare costs.
