CAMBRIDGE, England– Healx, a UK-based company using artificial intelligence for drug discovery, has announced a new partnership with SCI Ventures to develop treatments for spinal cord injury (SCI). The collaboration will focus on using AI to accelerate the discovery of therapies for paralysis, an area with few treatment options despite affecting over 20 million people worldwide.
The project will begin with a program targeting chronic spinal cord injury, a condition with high care costs and limited therapeutic development. SCI Ventures, which is supported by organizations like the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation and Wings for Life, is providing funding and scientific resources.
Healx will apply its machine learning platform to identify promising drug candidates, including repurposed compounds, with the goal of moving potential treatments more quickly into clinical trials. The effort will also draw on newly available neuroregeneration datasets.
“Spinal cord injury is a well-understood condition biologically, but progress on treatment has been slow,” said Tim Guilliams, CEO and co-founder of Healx. “It’s an ideal test case for AI-based discovery.”
SCI Ventures’ Managing Director Adrien Cohen said the partnership aims to push past current limits in neuroregenerative medicine. “For the first time, recovery from paralysis feels within reach. Combining our clinical insight with Healx’s AI tools gives us a real shot at changing the outlook for millions.”
While the initial focus is on SCI, both groups say the work could have implications for other neurological conditions like ALS, stroke, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s, by uncovering shared pathways and treatment strategies.
