On March 13, 2024 Zephyr AI, Inc. ("Zephyr AI"), a healthcare technology company committed to developing fast and explainable Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions to democratize precision medicine, reported it has successfully closed a $111 million Series A funding round with participation from Revolution Growth, Eli Lilly & Company, Jeff Skoll, and EPIQ Capital Group, among others (Press release, Zephyr AI, MAR 13, 2024, View Source [SID1234641129]). The company is developing improved data federation tools along with various machine learning algorithms in the areas of oncology and cardiometabolic disease.

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"The expansion of our diverse multimodal data resources will accelerate the advancement of Zephyr AI’s algorithms, paving the way for us to transform the landscape of precision medicine and improve outcomes for our partners and patients."

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"The US has the highest rate of avoidable cancer and cardiometabolic-related deaths among any high-income country. We must do better," said Grant Verstandig, Zephyr AI’s Co-Founder and Executive Chairman. "At Zephyr AI, we are harnessing the power of AI to extract novel insights to better define patient stratification and response predictions as well as improve federation of real-world data. With our world-class team, and the support of this investor group, we are deploying one of the largest clinicogenomic datasets that has unprecedented breadth across disease states and data partners. Collectively, we are now well positioned to support our mission of democratizing precision medicine, enhancing both the speed and success of clinical trials."

According to Dr. Justin Stebbing, Chairman of Zephyr AI’s Scientific and Medical Advisory Board, Editor of Oncogene (published under the Nature portfolio), and Professor of Biomedical Sciences at ARU, Cambridge, the company’s technology stands out along two crucial dimensions. "First, it has empirically demonstrated the ability to navigate the intricacies of real-world patient data, historically a challenge in the field. Second, leveraging recent breakthroughs in representation learning, the technology elucidates the biological context underlying its predictions. This contextual understanding is pivotal in drug development decision-making, revealing patient selection insights unpredictable using today’s tools to maximize the value of both approved medicines and drugs in development."

The new funds will enable Zephyr AI to further enhance its analytical speed and fortify its extensive collection of training and validation data sets. Moreover, the funds will support the expansion of the company’s scientific and commercial teams to expedite the delivery of its rapidly growing pipeline of insights to the market.

"The expansion of our diverse multimodal data resources will accelerate the advancement of Zephyr AI’s algorithms, paving the way for us to transform the landscape of precision medicine and improve outcomes for our partners and patients," said Jeff Sherman, Co-Founder, Interim CEO, and Chief Technology Officer of Zephyr AI.

Zephyr AI has had two abstracts accepted for publication at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) (Free AACR Whitepaper) annual meeting to be held in San Diego on April 5-10, 2024.

1)

Abstract # 3519/11: Reconstructing a latent representation of gene expression from genomic alterations to improve clinical utility of real-world clinicogenomics data presented by Maayan Baron et al., Monday April 8th, 1.30 – 5.00pm

2)

Abstract #7373/1: Generative Bayesian networks for augmentation of molecular data from commercial genetic panels presented by Dillon Tracy et al., Wednesday April 10th 9.00 – 12.30pm

"We are excited to be part of this growing ecosystem of AI-enabled drug development and welcome the opportunity to attend AACR (Free AACR Whitepaper) where we will engage with the scientific community and present some of our emerging scientific insights from our platform," Sherman said.

Cooley LLP served as legal counsel for Zephyr AI.