AI drug company Exscientia, founded in a city coffee shop and developed from Dundee University’s labs, has officially been taken over by a US pharmaceutical rival in a £500 million deal.
The firm was officially delisted from the NASDAQ stock exchange on Wednesday, after the buy-out was completed.
Exscientia is a spin-out business from Dundee University, started by scandal-hit Andrew Hopkins and two others in 2012.
Hopkins was forced out as chief executive of the company he built from the ground-up in February following an investigation into “inappropriate” behaviour towards staff.
Exscientia now becomes a “wholly owned subsidiary” of Recursion.
A Dundee office still operates from the city quay complex Dundee One, which employs approximately 20 staff.
Exscientia becomes Recursion
The move will see Exscientia trade as Recursion UK.
David Hallett was Exscientia interim chief executive and has now been appointed chief scientific officer at Recursion.
“The combination of our platforms and people make us the company to beat,” he said
“With our combined strength of real-world proprietary data and the models we’ve created – hypothesizing, testing and learning in a continuous loop
“We are redefining the space by shrinking timelines and costs, identifying and optimising lead candidates faster than traditional methods.”
AI drug discovery
Chris Gibson, Recursion co-founder and chief executive, said the merger would see the American firm become a global leader in AI-enabled drug discovery.
“I believe the combination of the incredible teams and platforms at Exscientia and Recursion position us as the leader of the AI-enabled drug discovery and development.
“With more than 10 clinical and preclinical programs in the internal pipeline, more than 10 partnered programs and over $450m in upfront and realised milestone payments received from partners to date out of more than $20bn possible, we are advancing a flywheel of discovery and creating value in our pipeline through technology.”
Recursion is headquartered in Salt Lake City, USA, where it is a founding member of BioHive, the Utah life sciences industry collective.
They also have offices in Toronto, Montreal, San Francisco, New York, Oxford and London.
Dundee coffee shop
Exscientia uses AI to help design drugs which can dramatically reduce the time taken to develop medicines.
Since it was established in a Dundee coffee shop, Exscientia signed a series of multi-million pound deals with global drug giants.
Earlier this year it was announced Recursion had purchased the company.
The AI-enabled drug tech allows for fewer human tests, evidence shows, which can speed-up medicine development by years.
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