A new venture between the Mayo Clinic and a Boston-area artificial intelligence firm will work with drug companies to discover whether molecules researched for treatment of one disease can effectively treat other conditions.
The month-old research company is called Qrativ and will target conditions for which current treatments are lacking. Mayo's partner in the joint venture is Cambridge-based Nference.
"Mayo's interest in this is not only will we be making new therapies for patients, but I believe that this is also going to enhance Mayo's research capabilities," said Mayo's Dr. Andrew Badley, an infectious disease specialist who directs Mayo's Office of Translation to Practice. "Already we've used the Nference platform for a few investigators at Mayo, which has led to new insights and new associations that have advanced the progress of science tangibly."
Nference is bringing the advanced computing power of its Darwin.ai artificial neural network to bear on huge sets of drug and disease data.
Mayo experts will evaluate the results to see whether the novel therapies suggested by the computer could be particularly useful in treating rare diseases, cancers and other conditions.
Qrativ (pronounced CURE-ative) has completed an $8.3 million round of fundraising and anticipates raising additional money. Mayo Clinic and private equity firms Matrix Capital Management and Matrix Partners have invested in the effort.
Mayo will use any profits from the venture to support its nonprofit goals in health care, medical education and research.
Repurposing old drug compounds for new uses is not new. One of the best-known examples is thalidomide, which was banned in the 1960s as a treatment for morning sickness because it caused birth defects and fetal deaths but was eventually approved in the United States in 2006 as a safe and effective treatment for the blood cancer multiple myeloma.
