Paris-based Inato, a platform that makes clinical trials more accessible, announced on Wednesday, March 29, that it has raised $20M (approximately €18.4M) in a Series A2 round of funding.
The capital comes from Cathay Innovation, Obvious Ventures, and new investors La Maison and Top Harvest Capital.
Fund utilisation
Inato says the new funding will fuel its continued product innovation, international growth, and hiring of top talent.
The French company will also advance its diversity product offering to enable sponsors to meet their diversity goals based on new FDA requirements.
The company will also invest in oncology-specific innovation to increase access to care.
Inato will also further define and scale its data model to continue to improve matching reliability between community sites and sponsor trials.
“At Inato we are reversing this trend by flipping the model and empowering research-experienced community sites to access the right trials for their team and local populations — regardless of who they are or where they live,” says Inato Co-Founder and CEO Kourosh Davarpanah.
“This also enables sponsors to partner with a broader range of verified community research sites, decreasing competition, accelerating site activation, and increasing patient access,” adds Davarpanah.
Inato: Making clinical trial accessible
Founded in 2020, Inato makes clinical trials more accessible, inclusive, and efficient for patients, community-based clinical researchers, and pharmaceutical companies globally.
The company’s platform connects global pharmaceutical companies with a more extensive network of community research sites, facilitating the matching of the right trial to the right patient.
Since its inception, the Inato platform has quickly become a trusted two-sided platform with over 2,500 community research sites that support more than 70 disease areas in more than 60 countries.
To date, the company has formed partnerships with a third of the top 30 pharmaceutical companies to make their medical research more accessible, inclusive, and efficient.
The Investor
Cathay Innovation is a global venture capital firm, created in affiliation with Cathay Capital. It invests in startups across North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
In July 2022, Cathay Innovation launched its third fund at €1B backing startups that are accelerating the sustainable transformation of industries and society.
As a multi-stage fund with over $2B in assets under management, Cathay Innovation partners with visionary entrepreneurs and startups positively impacting the world through technology.
“Our repeat investment in Inato represents our strong conviction in the company’s mission, team, and continued success as an emerging leader and pioneer when it comes to changing the status quo in clinical trial diversity and access,” says Jean-François Cochy, partner at Cathay Innovation.
“At Cathay, we strongly believe in supporting the emergence of global leaders in digital health, and Inato is a bright example through its adoption by hospitals in 60 countries and pharmaceutical groups from all regions. Inato also reflects the strength of the Cathay ecosystem with its strong collaboration with our strategic partner Sanofi,” adds Cochy.
