Biotech startup Healx broaden global outreach for their Rare Treatment Accelerator through Discover

UK-based technology company Healx recently used IN-PART’s Discover platform to identify new academic partners with therapeutic opportunities in the rare and orphan disease space. These partners were outside of Healx’s existing networks, and the team at Healx were keen to broaden their engagement with academic institutions into new geographic regions. 

Dr Clara Tang, Healx’s Alliance Strategy Manager, worked with IN-PART to run a Discover campaign that uncovered new academic partnership opportunities for the company, with support from the in-house STEM experts in our Discover team, Clara ran an ‘Industry Call for Opportunities’ (ICO) campaign for therapeutic assets through our global academic network.

A total of 1,610 universities and research institutes from 79 countries were approached by our team about Healx’s Discover campaign. Healx received 59 submissions outlining unique therapeutic opportunities for rare diseases from institutes including the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, Dartmouth College, McGill University, Seoul National University, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and the Puerto Rico Science, Technology and Research Trust.

Following the campaign, Clara and her team initiated contact with 21 academics and institutes to discuss their opportunities further.

Speaking about the outcomes from Healx’s Discover campaign, Dr Tang told us that

Discover helped to us to not only broaden our outreach to include many more academic institutions, but also widen our geographic reach to those outside of the United States. It also reduced the internal cost and resources required to complete this kind of outreach and provided a uniform response and follow-up mechanism.”

Healx is currently pursuing the next steps following their introductions, including reviewing further non-confidential information from the submitters of the research projects, signing mutual CDAs with submitters whose projects would be a good fit for Healx’s innovation needs, and beginning option/licencing discussions with any institutions who have passed due diligence checks. 

They told us that:

Promising opportunities will augment our internal pipeline and help Healx to achieve its mission of accelerating novel therapies towards rare disease patients.”

Summarising the outcomes of the programme, Clara said

Overall, this was a very efficient and cost-effective campaign that gave us a wider outreach than we would have otherwise achieved. The IN-PART team was professional and easy to work with.”

Read more success profiles and case studies of partnerships initiated through IN-PART’s matchmaking platform for university-industry collaboration.

Who are Healx?

Healx is a mission-driven technology company pioneering the next wave of drug discovery in order to bring novel, effective treatments to rare disease patients around the world. There are 7,000 known rare diseases that affect 400 million people across the globe, but only 5% of those conditions have an approved treatment. By combining frontier AI technology with deep drug discovery and development expertise, Healx can accelerate the pace, increase the scale and improve the chance of success of rare disease treatment development in order to meet this huge unmet need and have unprecedented patient impact.

Founded in Cambridge, UK, in 2014 by Dr Tim Guilliams (a Biochemical Engineer and tech entrepreneur) and Dr David Brown (co-inventor of Viagra and former Global Head of Drug Discovery at Roche), Healx has raised around $70 million to date, added over 20 projects to its risk-balanced therapeutic portfolio, and built a cross-functional team of over 110 tech and drug discovery experts.

What is Discover?

Discover is IN-PART’s bespoke technology scouting platform that puts companies’ research and development requirements directly to our global network of academics and research commercialisation professionals from over 1400 institutions in 40 countries, spanning 6 continents.

To learn how Discover is helping leading industry teams to extend their global reach and gain a competitive edge, send a message to our team who’ll reach out to set up a call.

Written by Charlie Appleby-Mallinder. Edited by Alex Stockham. 

Copyrights reserved unless otherwise agreed – IN-PART Publishing Ltd., 2022: ‘ Tech startup Healx uses Discover to find global partners for rare disease treatment discovery and development’

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