PolyModels Hub raises GBP 1.1m Seed to build the digital backbone for pharma process development

London, UK – July 9, 2024 – PolyModels Hub, the digital backbone for pharma process development, today announces the completion of a £1.1 million Seed funding round by Marathon Venture Capital. This investment will accelerate PolyModels Hub’s mission to help pharmaceutical companies deliver breakthrough therapies faster through its groundbreaking software platform.

Accelerating the development of medicines to deliver breakthrough therapies to patients is a significant societal challenge. Complex therapeutic modalities require sophisticated drug processes to obtain molecules with the desired properties while maintaining high-quality standards. Historically, R&D expenditures per molecule have consistently increased. However, recent advancements in digital technology and data integration offer hope for reversing this trend, making the business model more sustainable.

The use of digital models in process design is a foundational paradigm driving the transformation in R&D. These models are progressively being adopted across the industry. Despite their potential, the adoption of these tools by small, medium, and even large pharma organisations remains limited due to the complexity involved in managing and understanding such advanced modelling tools. A major challenge faced by pharmaceutical organisations is selecting the appropriate modelling approach, especially when experimental data is limited or constrained, to address specific challenges during medicine development. Moreover, integrating models into the traditional drug development workflow is challenging despite the recent push and advocacy from major regulatory agencies.

This is where PolyModels Hub introduces ModelFlow, a comprehensive digital platform designed to revolutionise pharma process development. ModelFlow seamlessly integrates models, scientific data, and insights into a single, cohesive product. This platform shifts the focus to advancing a company’s medicine portfolio through regulatory and business milestones by offering a robust solution for project management and the maximisation of digital tools.

With ModelFlow, scientists, digital teams, and pharma leaders can collaborate effectively, building and managing every aspect of how models should create significant impact and value in developing new drugs or optimising existing ones. By leveraging the founders’ combined expertise, ModelFlow delivers a streamlined tech-enabled library of model-based workflows that unites essential data, information, model files, web-app deployment and insights into an exceptionally simple yet highly effective tool.

“Developing a drug remains an expensive and time-consuming process. Unlike other industries, product development in pharmaceuticals relies heavily on numerous experiments with minimal knowledge transfer from past products, driven by the expertise and know-how of scientists. We have witnessed first-hand the inefficiencies of traditional drug development, as well as the growing desire and business need to transform this field. Our vision for PolyModels Hub is to revolutionise how scientists, digital teams, and senior stakeholders collaborate to accelerate development efforts and bring breakthrough therapies to market faster than ever. With today’s advanced technology, supportive business context, and favourable regulatory framework, we believe now is the perfect time to realise this vision.”

added Antonio Benedetti, co-founder & CEO

The team, which brings unique chemical and software engineering expertise, has already partnered with leading pharmaceutical companies to digitally design and run in-silico simulations for new and existing medicines. These simulations directly impact key decisions on the quality attributes of drugs, accelerating time to market and saving millions in process development costs. Ultimately, PolyModels Hub aims to build the digital backbone for pharma process development, helping scientists conduct research, collaborate, build, and manage their drug portfolios all in one platform.

In a short time, they have also managed to build an audience of pharma researchers through the community part of their platform, where scientists can highlight and discuss the latest tools of the trade, finding and rating papers with scientific models and pharma process development best practices.

“Modelling and simulations in the pharmaceutical industry are becoming increasingly popular, with entire teams now focusing on digitalizing their processes using advanced techniques, ranging from AI to Computational Fluid Dynamics. These digital solutions require a unique central platform where they can create tangible value for scientific and modelling projects in a systematic manner. This is precisely why we founded PolyModels Hub and developed our product, ModelFlow. “

Harry Christodoulou, co-founder & Director of Modelling & Science

PolyModels Hub today announces the completion of a GBP 1.1 million seed round by Marathon Venture Capital. The round will enable the team to expand, accelerating an ambitious product roadmap and meeting the rapidly growing demand for their innovative solution.

“Our next steps involve significantly enhancing our platform, rolling out advanced modelling and simulation tools, integrating the best software and technology components into a simple and intuitive platform. Additionally, our AI layer will recommend the optimal tools for each task, ensuring efficiency and precision. We are also committed to expanding our team with top-tier talent to support our ambitious goals and drive the digital transformation in pharma process development”

Antonio Yankey, Co-founder & Director of Tech & Product

“The pharma industry is being revolutionised by modern technologies including AI, biotechnology, and robotics. Yet, pharma process development, which is a critical part of taking a drug product to market, is still driven by the empirical knowledge of scientists and relies on paper-based systems and manual processes. PolyModels Hub brings a rare mix of chemical and software engineering expertise to digitalise pharma process development and help pharma deliver breakthrough therapies faster to the growing and ageing population. We are excited to work together with the team towards bringing their vision forward”

Alex Alexakis, investor at Marathon Venture Capital

As the pharmaceutical industry races to innovate and launch more new products for the increasingly complex and segmented patient market faster, the time has come to rethink how drugs are developed. PolyModels Hub is on a mission to help organisations manage their drug portfolios and accelerate time to market. For further information, visit www.polymodelshub.com

About PolyModels Hub

PolyModels Hub is a pioneering team of pharma R&D and manufacturing specialists committed to accelerating the adoption of digital technologies in pharma process development. With expertise in chemical and software engineering, PolyModels Hub offers an innovative perspective and solution to the industry.

The company is on a journey to empower scientists with AI tools to model, simulate, and get access to insights across all steps and protocols followed to turn chemical compounds into safe drug products – all inside a collaborative platform made for pharma.

With PolyModels Hub’s platform, pharmaceutical companies can deliver breakthrough therapies to patients faster, putting emphasis on how modelling can aid the development of robust processes while drug’s quality control, delivering the desired result consistently across batches and providing assurance to regulatory authorities that the drug can be reliably produced to meet stringent standards.

About Marathon Venture Capital

Marathon Venture Capital is a seed-stage venture capital fund helping ambitious founders build world-class technology companies. With over €100 million in capital raised, Marathon is the first investor in fast-growing startups such as Causaly, Learnworlds, and Hack The Box. To learn more, visit www.marathon.vc. For further information, please contact [email protected]