From left: Dr Donal O’Shea, CEO of Deciphex; and Mairin Rafferty, COO of Deciphex. Image: Nick Bradshaw
Irish and US investors have backed a Series A funding round for Dublin-based software firm Deciphex.
An Irish start-up is hoping to accelerate R&D into AI in the area of preclinical digital pathology after closing a Series A funding round worth $6.2m (€5.45m). The round was backed by Enterprise Ireland as well as a number of Irish and US investors working in the fields of life sciences and diagnostics.
These investors included Irrus Investments, the Halo Business Angel Network medtech syndicate, Act Venture Capital, and US-based NextSteps Capital and GI Partners of Illinois.
Founded in 2017, Deciphex has offices in Dublin and recently opened a US facility in Chicago where it offers pathology digitisation services. The company plans to expand its US presence in the future.
‘The investment will have a huge impact’
Deciphex has two products on the market to date. Its Patholytix Preclinical system is designed to accelerate the evaluation of drug safety and reviews of digital pathology specimens, while Patholytix AI uses AI to triage samples of histology images.
The company is part of a €2m consortium under the EU Fast Track to Innovation programme involving Janssen Pharmaceuticals, and is also part of a €5.6m Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund project announced in 2018. Partners of this latter project include University College Dublin, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, the Mater Hospital and IBM Research to transform the diagnosis and treatment of colorectal cancer.
“We are really excited to announce a fully subscribed Series A round, which allows the company to scale effectively to the next level in its journey,” said Dr Donal O’Shea, CEO of Deciphex.
“The investment will have a huge impact on our ability to accelerate our commercialisation programme and to continue to bring the best possible products and services to our customers and collaborators. Our investors have strong domain experience in software, life sciences, healthcare and intellectual property, which provides us with a strong value add to the capital available.”
