adsilico raises £10M to test medical devices on AI-generated virtual patients
What's the deal? University of Leeds spinout adsilicoDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → has raised £10 million in a Series A round led by PXN VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, with existing investors Northern GritstoneDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and ParkwalkDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → also participating. The Leeds-based company uses generative AI to build virtual patients that test how medical devices perform before human trials.
What's the endgame? adsilico creates realistic virtual hearts and blood vessels from anonymised clinical scans. Its Virtual Chimera technology then simulates how devices such as heart valves and stents work across populations representing different ages, sexes, ethnicities, body sizes, and conditions.
What's the problem it solves? Clinical trials often fail to reflect the diversity of patients who eventually receive the products. Research in JAMA Internal Medicine found women made up just 33% of participants across 195 trials of high-risk implants, falling to 29% in cardiovascular trials.
What's the money for? The company, based at the university's Nexus innovation hub, plans to grow its workforce from 14 to 34. It will also extend its technology beyond heart devices into treatments for conditions including brain aneurysms.
"We give medical device manufacturers early insight into the impact of anatomical diversity when it can still shape the design and help avoid costly mistakes or harm to patients," said chief executive and co-founder Sheena Macpherson. Founded in 2024, the company has already completed projects with heart valve and neurovascular device makers.
What investors say: "What Sheena and the team have built has the potential to have a significant global impact for medical device manufacturers, the pre-clinical development process and, therefore most important of all, patients," said Elizabeth Young, investment manager at PXN Ventures.
The signal: The £10 million round sits among the larger early-stage raises in its field, reflecting growing interest in "in-silico" trials that simulate patient populations to assess device safety. With regulators sharpening their focus on AI and simulation-based evidence, the approach is drawing fresh capital — and attention.
Read more: thebusinessdesk.com
Image credit: adsilico
