Belfast drug discovery company raises £900,000 to help tackle infectious diseases

Northern Ireland drug discovery company AMPLY Discovery Limited has raised £900,000 in a mix of equity and grant funding to develop new drug products using its proprietary AI-driven drug discovery platform.

The Belfast-based biotech company, which is a spin-out from the Queen’s University Belfast, was established in 2021 to commercialise an innovative drug discovery platform which was developed by researchers in the School of Biological Science at Queen’s.

Its technology platform has been the subject of more than eight years of scientific research.

AMPLY Discovery is focused on helping to solve the challenges created by the global health threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which threatens to render ineffective mankind’s current portfolio of antibiotics to fight infections caused by bacteria, viruses and fungi.

Its team is using AI and machine-learning techniques derived from the financial markets to mine biological data to discover novel molecules. These molecules, such as proteins and peptides, offer significant value as new biopharmaceutical drug products which target hard-to-treat diseases.

The company’s initial flag-ship programme is developing a new anti-infective product to tackle bovine mastitis and has received grant funding from Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency under its ICURE Aid for Start Ups programme.

The company has raised further funding to support its development programmes through equity investment from Co-fund NI, which is managed by Clarendon Fund Managers and supported by Invest NI and the British Business Bank, the QUBIS Innovation Fund, the Helix Way Partnership, and angel investment from members of the Halo Business Angel Network (HBAN).

Dr Ben Thomas, chief executive officer and co-founder said: “It is exciting to be able to advance the commercial development of AMPLY Discovery thanks to the tremendous support of our investors and Queen’s University Belfast.

“The development of initial research in this domain started out almost a decade ago when I considered adopting AI and machine learning techniques I had worked with in financial markets for the computational biology domain.”

Highlighting the £900,000 funding as a ‘significant achievement’, Dermot Tierney, chief commercial officer and co-founder of AMPLY Discovery said it would enable the firm to target commercial opportunities.

He explained: “This latest funding milestone is a significant achievement for AMPLY Discovery and will allow us to target significant commercial opportunities for new anti-infective products starting with bovine mastitis.”

Stuart Gaffikin, investment manager at Clarendon Fund Managers, continued: “Co-Fund NI is delighted to support AMPLY Discovery and its team as it progresses the development of its technology in the area of infectious diseases and beyond.”

The QUBIS Innovation Fund is an SEIS & EIS fund aimed specifically at university spin-out companies. The objective of the fund is to provide an early source of finance for spin-outs to begin their commercial journey as soon as possible.

Anne Dornan, entrepreneurial networks manager at QUBIS, added: “AMPLY Discovery is a fantastic example of the support Queen’s can offer our researchers though our investment arm, QUBIS Limited.

“The AMPLY team have moved through our entire gambit of support including the Lean Launch and ICURe programmes.”

Queen’s University Belfast is a member of the Russell Group of research intensive UK-based universities and has a long history of conducting innovative and world-leading research with partners in industry, government, public policy, social and healthcare, the arts and the voluntary sector, nationally and internationally.