Israeli pharmaceutical artificial intelligence startup Quris Technologies today announced $9 million in new funding and launched a clinical prediction AI platform to predict which drug candidates will safely work in humans.

The seed round included Dr. Judith Richter and Dr. Kobi Richter, pioneers of cardiovascular intervention therapeutics, with participation from Moshe Yanai. The funding will be used to further the company’s technology.

Quris uses AI-powered miniaturized “patients-on-a-chip” to avoid risks and costs of failed clinical trials and eliminate the reliance on animal testing. The company says its chip-on-chip platform revolutionizes drug development through the ability to build an unmatched pipeline of blockbuster drugs, developed both independently and through collaboration with partners.

The company now has 18 granted and pending patents. Its chip-on-chip platform uses a distinct combination of low-cost, disposable “miniaturized biology” chips and novel real-time nanosensor and nanocirculation chips. It can continuously train the Quris AI engine and drug candidate safety and efficacy predictor.

Focused initially on rare genetic diseases that cannot be modeled in animals, Quris also announced that it’s prepping the first drug developed on the platform for clinical trials in 2022. The first Quris drug addresses Fragile X syndrome, the most common inherited cause of autism and intellectual disabilities worldwide.

The company is run under the scientific leadership of Nobel Laureate Aaron Ciechanover and Dr. Robert S. Langer, co-founder of Moderna.

“Put simply: We are not mice, so what works in animal-based trials is not a proper indicator of what will work for people,” Ciechanover explained. “Using a breakthrough way to test drug candidates on miniaturized patients on chips, Quris can demonstrate their safety and efficacy, or lack thereof, through preliminary chip-based clinical trials.”

In partnership with The New York Stem Cell Foundation Research Institute, Quris is also developing a fully automated, self-training AI platform that better predicts clinical safety and efficacy for new drug candidates. Working with a leading independent non-profit research institute dedicated to translating cutting-edge stem cell research into clinical breakthroughs and cures for patients, Quris will be able to benefit from NYSCF’s unmatched stem-cell automation technology.

Combining the power of the NYSCF and Quris’s AI-based clinical prediction, the platform will be trained on known safe and toxic drugs. In doing so, it can then rapidly screen thousands of potential drug formulations on hundreds of genetically diverse, miniaturized patients-on-a-chip to test efficacy at a small fraction of the cost.

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