Foresite Capital and F-Prime Capital joined earlier series B investors including Oxford Science Innovations to take Oxford drug discovery spinout Genomics’ total funding to $58.2m.
Genomics, a UK-based drug discovery engine developer spun out of University of Oxford, extended its series B round to £33m ($42m) today with the close of an oversubscribed second $10.2m tranche.
F-Prime Capital, the venture capital firm formed by financial services group Fidelity, and Foresite Capital contributed to the extension, which followed an initial tranche raised in August 2018 from investors including university venture fund Oxford Sciences Innovation and commercialisation firm IP Group.
Drug manufacturer Vertex Pharmaceuticals led the first close, while Woodford Investment Management, Lansdowne Partners, Tanarra and Invesco Perpetual also supplied funding.
Founded in 2014, Genomics has developed a machine learning-powered genomic analytics platform that examines more than 100 billion genomic data points to forecast the impact of potential therapies.
The series B cash will go towards Genomics’ expansion plans as the spinout looks to enhance its datasets and the underlying analytics technology.
Steve Knight, managing partner of F-Prime Capital, will join the Genomics board of directors alongside Jim Tananbaum, CEO and managing director of Foresite Capital.
The spinout had already obtained $16.2m in a 2014 series A round backed by University of Oxford, IP Group and its IP Venture Fund II, Invesco Perpetual, Lansdowne, Woodford Investment and Wylie Family Trust.
Genomics was co-founded by Peter Donnelly, professor of statistical science and former director of Oxford’s Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics, together with Gil McVean, director of the Big Data Institute.
Chris Spencer and Gerton Lunter, who work at the Wellcome Centre as a research scientist and professor respectively, also helped start the company.
