Israeli artificial intelligence disease model company CytoReason Ltd. today said it has raised $80 million in new funding in a round that included Nvidia Corp. to expand the application of its models, grow its molecular and clinical data, and establish an office in the U.S. later this year.

Founded in 2016, CytoReason develops AI-driven disease models to provide insights into human diseases and drug treatments. The company’s platform allows for the comparison of treatments, prioritization of drug programs and real-time updates that allow scientists and executives to make decisions around drug portfolios and drug performance.

Core to its offering is a pitch to reduce research and development times. It also aims to improve the probability of technical and regulatory success across life sciences companies, organizations involved in the research, development and commercialization of pharmaceuticals, biotechnology products and medical devices. CytoReason’s platform prioritizes speed, safety and accuracy, which are all critical when making research and development decisions.

The company provides therapeutic area leaders — experts responsible for guiding research and development strategies, clinical practices and treatment approaches within specific fields — with molecular-level insights and AI tools to assist in making data-driven decisions. The tools also help in improving the probability of drug testing success.

CytoReason has produced technology and scientific breakthroughs that have come about through its platform’s use regularly being published in top-tier journals such as Nature, Cell and Gut. CytoReason’s scientists published 20 peer-reviewed articles in 16 journals in 2023, demonstrating the scientific throughput of the company’s team and technology.

Six of the world’s top 10 pharma companies use CytoReason’s technology to make data-driven decisions in immunology, inflammation, immuno-oncology, metabolism and other therapeutic areas.

One of those pharma companies is Pfizer Inc., which joined Nvidia, OurCrowd Ltd. and Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. in participating in the venture capital round. Pfizer has also had a partnership with CytoReason since previously investing $20 million in to the company in 2022.

“The rapid expansion of new technologies, like artificial intelligence, holds tremendous potential to help transform what is possible in human health,” Mikael Dolsten, chief scientific officer and president of worldwide research, development and medical at Pfizer, said in a statement. “Our collaboration with CytoReason leverages its cutting-edge immunology multiomics platform to augment Pfizer’s own R&D capabilities and generate invaluable insights into new drug development pathways for patients.”

Nvidia’s interest in CytoReason is, perhaps unsurprisingly, thanks to the company using Nvidia AI chips.

“Over the last year, CytoReason has strengthened its platforms using Nvidia’s latest accelerated computing and AI platforms, achieving more than 10x acceleration for inference workloads,” said Kimberly Powell, vice president and general manager of healthcare at Nvidia. “Our continued collaboration with CytoReason will help enable more life sciences companies to benefit from CytoReason’s predictive clinical insights.”

Including the new funding, CytoReason has raised about $180 million to date, according to data from Tracxn.

Image: CytoReason