SAN DIEGO, June 05, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Square 1 Bank, a division of Pacific Western Bank, today announced that it has provided a $20.5 million credit facility to existing client Recursion Pharmaceuticals, an innovative biotechnology company specializing in artificial intelligence enabled drug discovery. Proceeds from the facility will support continued growth initiatives.
Based in Salt Lake City, Recursion Pharmaceuticals combines artificial intelligence and automation to conduct experimental biology at scale. By applying advanced machine learning algorithms to a rapidly-growing dataset of more than one petabyte of relatable biological images, the company is able to discover new chemical entities, predict mechanisms of action, reveal previously undiscovered biology, and map compounds to any disease that can be modeled in human cells. Recursion is backed by several leading investors including Lux Capital, Data Collective Venture Capital, Mubadala Investment Company, and Obvious Ventures.
“Using a parallel approach and leveraging the speed of automation and the power of machine learning, Recursion aims to bring treatments to the clinic much faster and at a lower cost than previously possible,” said Chris Gibson, Ph.D., co-founder and chief executive officer of Recursion Pharmaceuticals. “With Square 1’s non-dilutive funding option, we are able to expand our platform to enable target discovery and new chemical entity discovery as well as identify potential treatments in new indication areas like inflammation, immuno-oncology, infectious disease, and aging. These initiatives support our ambitious goal of finding 100 new treatments by 2025.”
“Square 1 has enjoyed serving as Recursion Pharmaceuticals’ financial services partner since 2016 and seeing its impressive evolution during this time,” added Rilus Graham, senior vice president in Square 1’s life sciences practice. “After raising $60 million in its Series B financing, the company is positioned for significant growth and continued breakthroughs in biotech. We look forward to working with the Recursion team every step of the way in their successful journey.”
About Square 1 Bank
Square 1 Bank is a division of Pacific Western Bank, a Los Angeles-based commercial bank with over $24 billion in assets. A full service financial services partner to entrepreneurs and their investors, Square 1 provides clients flexible resources and attentive service to help their companies grow. Square 1 offers a broad range of venture debt, treasury and cash management solutions through offices in top innovation centers: Atlanta, Austin, the Bay Area, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Durham, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, San Diego, Seattle, and Washington, DC. Pacific Western Bank is a wholly-owned subsidiary of PacWest Bancorp (NASDAQ:PACW). For more information, visit www.square1bank.com.
About Recursion Pharmaceuticals
Recursion Pharmaceuticals is an emerging biotechnology company based in Salt Lake City. Recursion combines experimental biology and bioinformatics with artificial intelligence in a massively parallel system to quickly and efficiently identify treatments for any disease which can be modeled at the cellular level. From its initial and continued focus on drug repurposing to treat rare diseases, Recursion has broadened its platform to probe rich data from high-throughput automated screens for a number of indications, including aging, inflammation, infectious disease, oncology, and diagnostics. Recursion’s ultimate vision is to leverage technology to build a robust and reliable map of human cellular biology, which would enable a radical shift in the pace and scale at which new treatments could benefit patients. Learn more at www.recursionpharma.com, or connect on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Media Contacts:
Square 1 Bank, a division of Pacific Western Bank
Laura Piggott
919.597.7466
lpiggott@square1bank.com
Recursion Pharmaceuticals
press@recursionpharma.com
Jessica Yingling, Ph.D.
Little Dog Communications
858.344.8091
jessica@litldog.com