• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe

Drug Delivery Business

  • Clinical Trials
  • Research & Development
  • Drug-Device Combinations
  • FDA
  • Pharmaceuticals
  • Policy

Mayo Clinic, nference launch startup to leverage AI for drug development

July 14, 2017 By Sarah Faulkner

Mayo ClinicMayo Clinic and nference today launched a startup, Qrativ, focused on drug development driven by artificial intelligence. The company, backed by a $8.3 million Series A round, plans to combine nference’s AI platform and Mayo Clinic’s clinical data.

Qrativ hopes to use AI to discover potential new therapeutic indications for drugs earlier in development, in an effort to identify new treatments for rare conditions.

““In the last three years, the AI field has gained incredible momentum driven by major breakthroughs in deep learning neural networks,” co-founder & CEO of Qrativ and nference Murali Aravamudan said in prepared remarks. “Our core technology based on a neural network ensemble identifies nascent drug-disease, drug-gene and other therapeutically-relevant associations from the vast biomedical literature. The spatio-temporal signals are triangulated with real-world phenotypic and molecular evidence amassed from systemic and longitudinal patient care, which we believe can significantly accelerate drug discovery and development.”

“The ingenuity of Qrativ is that it will combine clinical insight and clinical need from Mayo Clinic with robust informatics capabilities,” Dr. Andrew Badley, the company’s co-founder & chief medical officer, added. “By taking into account genomic predictors of both desired treatment response and unwanted toxicity, Qrativ will be able to identify potential drug candidates more swiftly. This will enable us to use nference’s big data capabilities to define highly targeted patient populations and then leverage the deep clinical expertise of Mayo clinicians to design and implement optimal proof of concept trials to meet the unmet needs of our patients.”

Mayo Clinic, which has a financial stake in Qrativ, said it plans to use any revenue it receives to fund its efforts in patient care, education and research.

“This is a bold step for Mayo Clinic and complements our patient-centered care approach with an innovative way to uncover new therapeutic indications for drugs in the collective industry pipeline,” Dr. Badley said. “It enables us to search for all possible uses of a drug starting at the early stages of development. That’s why we call this approach ‘drug purposing’ and not ‘repurposing.’ Through these collaborations, we hope to maximize every drug’s potential for as many patients and diseases as possible.”

“Solving unmet needs of the patients requires a union of forces,” Dr. Clark Otley, medical director for Mayo Clinic’s department of business development, said. “This collaboration is an example of our commitment to swiftly bring effective life-changing therapies to patients.”

Want to stay on top of DDBN content? Sign up for our e-mail newsletter for a weekly dose of drug-device news.

Filed Under: Discovery, Featured, Pharmaceuticals, Technology, Wall Street Beat Tagged With: Mayo Clinic, nference, qrativ

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

  • Glooko adds chief strategy officer to chief medical officer’s title
  • Cordis launches 10,000-patient registry for drug-eluting balloon
  • Senseonics opens $50M public offering, $25M private placement with Abbott
  • Study links Abbott CGM use to lower risk of hospitalizations due to heart complications
  • Go-Pen ApS wins FDA nod for user-filled insulin pen

Primary Sidebar

“ddb
EXPAND YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND STAY CONNECTED
Get the latest news and trends happening now in drug delivery.

MEDTECH 100 INDEX

Medtech 100 logo
Market Summary > Current Price
The MedTech 100 is a financial index calculated using the BIG100 companies covered in Medical Design and Outsourcing.

Footer

Drug Delivery Business News Logo

MassDevice Medical NETWORK

MassDevice
DeviceTalks
Medical Tubing + Extrusion
Medical Design & Outsourcing
MedTech100 Index
Drug Discovery & Development
Pharmaceutical Processing World
Medical Design Sourcing
R&D World

DRUG DELIVERY BUSINESS NEWS

Subscribe to Drug Delivery’s E-Newsletter
Advertise with us
About
Contact us
Privacy
Listen to our Weekly Podcasts

Copyright © 2025 · WTWH Media LLC and its licensors. All rights reserved.
The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of WTWH Media.

Privacy Policy | RSS