A backed four-year-old London business Peter Thiel It raised a $55 million Series B round about “fixing the broken clinical trial industry.”
The announcement comes at a time when the shape of artificial intelligence is changing. Revolutionize drug discovery and development.This, in turn, has fueled calls for a streamlined clinical trial process to help new drugs get to market faster.
Lindu health A platform has been built that covers the entire end-to-end process of conducting clinical trials, with automation playing a key role. That's why Lindus calls itself a “CRO” (contract research organization). One CROmedicine Biotechnology and medical device companies, pharmaceuticals, A third-party organization used by biotechnology and medical device companies to conduct critical clinical research that allows those companies to focus more on their core drug development business.
The CRO market was defined as a category. $82 trillion market It is projected to grow to $130 billion last year and by the end of the decade.
Trials and tribulations
Although clinical trials vary in size and scope; They typically involve several steps, including designing the trial and constructing the protocol and regulatory submission package. Then they run the routes; Technology must be set up to recruit patients and collect data. everyone This could take years, so when life-saving drugs appear on the cards, Anything that can be done quickly is good.
Lindus says it uses machine learning to streamline many parts of this process; For example, to design an initial protocol (a detailed plan), which can be very labor intensive. For this, Lindus has built a protocol generation tool trained on historical data that can create an initial draft.
Although its software is a large part of the Lindus offering, Co-founder. Mary Beckwith (pictured above with co-founders Michael Young and Nik Haldimann) emphasizes that the company provides everything needed to run an end-to-end clinical trial, including the staff needed to run it.
“We have now directly enrolled and treated more than 35,000 patients. in employees; We have test data; Pharmacists overseeing clinical operations and regulations; doctors technicians,
Founded in 2021, Lindus Health has so far delivered clinical trials across Europe and the US for asthma, Acne chronic fatigue syndrome; diabetes high blood pressure Focused on conditions such as weight control and social anxiety. These trials are for testing drugs or testing new medical devices.
“Like a lot of this, what excites us is the complex and pervasive conditions that so many people suffer from, and frankly, they've been ignored by the industry,” Beckwith said.
Drug discovery
While the rise of AI is leading to various issues. Ethics versus LEGAL LIMITATIONSOne area that has many people excited is its potential applications, particularly in healthcare. Drug discovery.
killed. Startups have increased. Resources to apply AI runs the drug discovery process.And at the heart of many of these is the company. Google's DeepMind. DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabi and John Jumper in October He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. For AlphaFold, A deep learning model that predicts the 3D structure of proteins—critical information for disease research and assistance Scientists discover novel drug candidates..
Hasabi Estimated. With this advancement, all human diseases could be cured within a decade. Some are hehehe Early symptoms positive Clinical trials will be key. To prove the true value of technology. As with the drug discovery industry, Many startups done Cultivating. venture capital To modernize the dusty clinical trial industry.
This raises an important question: Is all the hullabaloo surrounding AI drug discovery leading to greater demand for clinical trial technology?
He thinks Beckwith has a connection.
“Frankly, all these AI drug discovery companies won't have the impact they deserve if they don't address this bottleneck in clinical trials,” he said. “The average AI drug discovery company spits out these drug targets and hypotheses, or you still need to test that patient population.”
For a pure software company; rapid testing; The concept of redundancy and shipping code is well ingrained in the company culture. But in biotech, even when software isn't central to operations, it's hard to adopt such a “move fast and break things” mantra.
There's a difference between building a fashion market and developing life-saving drugs, and for good reason. However, Beckwith says things have improved greatly with a more efficient clinical trial infrastructure.
“Our mission as a company is to help these biotech companies test and get it to patients faster and more safely,” he said.
'scratch the surface'
Lindus Health previously raised about $25 million, including equity and grants. $18 million Series A round in 2023 According to Spotify investor Creandum and billionaire Peter Thiel. With a fresh $55 million in the bank, the company is preparing to accelerate its expansion, including moving its global headquarters from the UK to the US – a transition that is currently underway.
In addition, Lindus plans to invest more resources in its commercial go-to-market team, expand into “more complex” types of clinical trials, and strengthen integration with third-party tools such as electronic medical records.
Like any company worth its salt in 2025, Lindus is also exploring applications for AI across its business, including ways to analyze real-time clinical trial data.
“We're just scratching the surface of what we can do with AI,” says Beckwith.
Lindus Health's Series B round, Creandum; Firstminute, Led by Balderton Capital with support from Seedcamp and Visionaries Club.