Investments in imaging for IXICO

Imperial Innovations Group and The Capital Fund have together contributed £850,000 to co-lead an investment round of £2.44m into pharmaceutical image analysis solutions provider IXICO.

Founded in 2004, using technology from Imperial College London and King’s College London, IXICO provides image analysis solutions for pre-clinical and clinical trials. The company’s products and services combine image acquisition expertise with computer algorithms devised by its employees and founding scientists.

Imaging has the potential to assess the effectiveness of new drugs, and can also detect possible side effects early in the development process. For imaging to fulfil this potential, it needs to be performed in a standardised and quantitative way. As IXICO’s service is scaleable, it can be used to analyse thousands of images in very early drug tests or in late phase trials.

IXICO’s technology provides fast and accurate results about the impact of potential new drug molecules on disease symptoms including brain volume changes in dementia and bone degeneration in arthritis. IXICO claims the end result for patients is the faster development of new, more effective treatments for painful or life threatening conditions.

IXICO’s technology is already in use with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies for imaging trials from Phase 0 to Phase III. The service has been shown to be effective in a wide variety of medical applications, though the company’s initial focus is on developing its services to assess the impact of new drugs for rheumatoid arthritis, dementia and oncology.