adsilico Raises £10M Series A to Test Devices on Virtual Patients

adsilico, a University of Leeds spinout founded in 2024, has raised £10M in a Series A led by PXN Ventures, with existing backers Northern Gritstone and Parkwalk also participating, tech.eu reports. The round brings total equity funding to £13.5M across seed and Series A, according to Tech Funding News, and will take headcount from 14 to 34 at the University of Leeds' Nexus innovation hub.

The platform uses generative AI to build virtual hearts and blood vessels from anonymised clinical scans, then runs simulations of heart valves, stents and flow diverters for brain aneurysms across populations that "can vary by age, sex, ethnicity, body size, and disease." The company says it complements lab, animal and clinical studies and may ultimately reduce the need for animal testing.

"Patients miss out on the chance of a life-saving device, or face uncertainty about whether it will work for them, because people like them weren't represented when it was designed and tested," said chief executive and co-founder Sheena Macpherson. The other two founders, Dr Nishant Ravikumar and Dr Zeike Taylor, are both at the University of Leeds.

It joins 72 other healthcare AI stories we've tracked over the past 90 days, including Boehringer and Microsoft's digital-patient-twins pact earlier this week.