Financial News

Irish biotech start-up raises €3.2m

By Business & Finance
27 October 2015
Nuritas

Nuritas, an Irish start-up company using artificial intelligence in therapeutics discovery, has announced the highest initial investment ever raised by an Irish company operating in this sector.

Food investment firm Singapore-based New Protein Capital (NPC) led the round, which brought together financial supporters from three continents including renowned Silicon Valley investor Ali Partovi.

Combining artificial intelligence and DNA sequencing, Nuritas discovers particular molecules in natural sources such as food that have scientifically validated health benefits.

The company has already developed and patented health-improving ingredients that can address global challenges as broad as inflammation, diabetes, ageing and MRSA.

Nuritas was founded by Dr Nora Khaldi to revolutionise the discovery of novel, natural and scientifically proven active ingredients that promote and manage health.

Speaking about the investment, Khaldi said: “I was told this was impossible and I decided not to listen. I built a team who believe in what we do and together we made it happen. We have discovered and patented some incredible life-changing ingredients and we will discover many more.”

CEO Emmet Browne added: “We are delighted to collaborate with such like-minded and visionary investors to help us accelerate the discovery revolution that we have already started. We share the same vision of dramatically improving life through combining cutting edge technology with intellect. With this investment we will become even better at speedily unlocking nature’s life-changing secrets that have remained hidden until now and as a result, improve global health.”

Matthieu Vermersch, founder, New Protein Capital, added: “A groundbreaking technology, scalable solutions and the ability to use big data mining to identify new natural health-benefiting ingredients for food and other areas, perfectly fits in the ecosystem of companies NPC has invested and is looking at investing in in the future. Nora Khaldi and Emmet Browne, have chosen a highly innovative path to address profound consumer market challenges. From the very first discussion the harmony between our visions was obvious.”