Akkure founder and CEO Dr Oran Rigby. Image: Akkure
This is Akkure’s second time crowdfunding and comes ahead of its plans to open a US office next year.
Medtech start-up Akkure has managed to once again raise €1m in seven days through its latest crowdfunding campaign.
This marks the second time the company – formerly called Akkure Genomics – has raised money from the Irish public through the Spark Crowdfunding platform.
Last year, the NovaUCD-based start-up raised €1.18m on this platform, which was more than double its initial target.
The second crowdfunding result comes ahead of Akkure’s plans to open a US office next year, the Business Post reports.
Founded in 2019 by Prof Oran Rigby and Dr Amy Hollingworth, Akkure has developed a clinical trials platform using AI, which helps people participate in the most relevant clinical trials based on data about themselves and their condition.
This matchmaking system aims to increase the recruitment and retention of patients participating in trials. As many as 85pc of these trials fail to retain enough patients while 80pc don’t finish on time, according to one clinical trial whitepaper.
Rigby said the achievement of raising €1m so quickly demonstrated the desire for patients to begin to influence and partake in clinical trials, for the benefit of both themselves and their patient communities.
The CEO also told the Business Post that Akkure was awarded a €700,000 grant from the Digital Transformation Innovation Fund and is confident it will raise a total of €2m from the grant and crowdfunding.
Akkure recently developed its own digital twin project, which is a unique virtual copy of a patient’s entire genetic makeup.
By combining this data on the company’s system, Akkure hopes its researchers can discover key insights to help clinicians develop new technologies and potential cures through precision medicine.
Spark Crowdfunding CEO Chris Burge called the result “unsurprising”, as Akkure has developed a “pioneering platform to combat global clinical trial issues”.
“Globally, 85pc of clinical trials struggle to meet enrolment deadlines, and Akkure aims to solve this,” Burge said. “It’s clear investors and the public alike share Akkure’s vision to take the company to the next level.”
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