A staggering 56% of drugs fail in clinical trials due to safety concerns, costing the pharmaceutical industry more than $400 billion annually. But what if those failures weren’t the end of the road? Ignota Labs, a biotech startup using AI to resurrect abandoned drug candidates, just closed a $6.9 million seed funding round to expand its efforts.

The round was co-led by Montage Ventures and AIX Ventures, with participation from Modi Ventures, Blue Wire Capital, and Gaingels. Ignota Labs plans to acquire more distressed assets and advance its first pipeline drug—a PDE9A inhibitor—into early-stage clinical trials.

AI Meets Drug Development: Solving the Safety Puzzle

Drug toxicity has long been a significant roadblock in pharmaceutical R&D. Ignota Labs tackles this challenge with SAFEPATH, its proprietary AI-powered platform that doesn’t just flag safety issues—it pinpoints their exact molecular and biological origins.

“Traditional safety assessments tell you when something is wrong, but they don’t tell you why,” said Sam Windsor, CEO and co-founder of Ignota Labs. “Our technology provides actionable insights to re-engineer and revive therapies, ensuring that promising drugs aren’t discarded prematurely.”

This game-changing approach is resonating with investors.

“Ignota Labs is tackling one of the most pressing challenges in drug development—rescuing valuable therapies that would otherwise be abandoned,” said Todd Kimmel, founder and managing partner at Montage Ventures. “Their SAFEPATH platform represents a groundbreaking approach, combining cutting-edge AI with deep scientific expertise to address the root causes of drug toxicity. We believe Ignota Labs has the potential to enable more drugs to reach the clinic and get to the patients who need them.”

Unlocking Billions in Value from ‘Near-Successes’

Ignota Labs specializes in identifying drug candidates that were discontinued due to safety concerns—often 80 to 90 percent of the way to success—and redesigning them for viability. Instead of starting from scratch, the company acquires these assets and then uses SAFEPATH to determine the root causes of toxicity and develop solutions.

This strategy significantly reduces development timelines by years and costs by millions, with each rescued therapy having multi-billion-dollar potential.

“Ignota is redefining drug development by shifting it from trial-and-error to a rational, data-driven process,” said Krish Ramadurai, partner at AIX Ventures. “Their AI-driven approach enables precise molecular refinements, accelerating clinical development and unlocking the potential of previously failed drugs.”

In just two years, Ignota Labs has already proven its model works. The company successfully in-licensed its first asset, a first-in-class metabolic health drug, which had been halted due to safety concerns. Using SAFEPATH, Ignota resolved these issues and validated the findings in rodent models. If successful, the drug could improve the lives of over 1.2 billion post-menopausal women.

A Multidisciplinary Team at the Forefront of AI-Driven Drug Rescue

Ignota Labs was founded by a team of experts at the intersection of AI, cheminformatics, and drug development.

• CEO and co-founder Sam Windsor previously worked on DeepMind’s AlphaFold team and has a decade of experience in life sciences.
• Chief Scientific Officer Jordan Lane has advanced five assets to clinical development.
• Chief Data Science Officer Layla Hosseini-Gerami is an expert in AI-driven drug discovery and cheminformatics.

The company is also publishing its findings. Ignota recently released a pre-print showcasing how SAFEPATH analyzes hepatotoxicity mechanisms in erlotinib and gefitinib and has a peer-reviewed paper published in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Digital Discovery journal.

With its AI-powered approach, Ignota Labs isn’t just reviving drugs—it’s rewriting the playbook for pharmaceutical R&D.