Digital pathology start-up Deciphex raises $6.2m for R&D

Deciphex, an Irish tech company that develops software to accelerate the delivery of pathology services, has raised $6.2 million (€5.4 million) to further accelerate research and development and market entry.

This brings total funding to date to nearly €8 million for a company that was founded in 2017 by Dr Donal O’Shea.

Deciphex uses artificial intelligence (AI) to interrogate tissue sections from biopsies to accelerate workflows and improve patient turnaround time and diagnostic accuracy. The company currently has two products on the market. Patholytix Preclinical, is designed to accelerate the evaluation of drug safety and also accelerating the review of digital pathology specimens. PatholytixAI is a separate solution that allows users to triage samples using AI-based interpretation of histology images.

Investment

The Series A funding round included participation from Irish investors Iruus Investments, the HBAN MedTech syndicate, ACT Venture Capital and Enterprise Ireland. Other participants were US- based NextSteps Capital and GI Partners of Illinois.

BrainWaveBank raises €1.2m for its ‘Fitbit for the brain’ technology

---

Investor exercises rights to 4m Amryt warrants

---

Gilead to add 140 jobs in Ireland as it plans new Dublin base

---

Seroba eyes Irish start-ups as it reaps rewards from investments

---

Speaking to The Irish Times, Dr O’Shea said the investment had been completed during the coronavirus crisis and largely involved existing backers.

“We’ve had incredible traction in the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors and are becoming an integral part of their clinical trials pipeline,” he said. “Over a very short period of time we’ve taken nearly all the top ten global pharma companies and are in significant use by them.”