Paris-based Inato raises €12.9 million Series A to grow its clinical research platform

French startup Inato, a platform that helps biopharmaceutical companies increase their pool of patients in clinical trials, recently announced it has raised €12.9 million Series A funding. The round was led by Obvious Ventures and Cathay Innovation, with participation from previous investors Serena and Fly Ventures.

Inato, founded in 2016, has created a platform that unlocks research site potential around the world. Designed by doctors, for doctors, its tool matches the best sites for any given study and ensures that site partners in the Inato network are successfully delivering trials. To date, Inato’s platform has helped biopharmaceutical companies and clinicians across more than 2,000 research sites and over 50 global trials. In addition, more than 3,500 doctors across 75 countries have used it to offer promising treatments to their patients.

Kourosh Davarpanah and William Pambrun founded Inato along with Pr. Philippe Ravaud and Dr. Jean-David Zeitoun, two physicians who had a shared concern for the historically low engagement of doctors in clinical research and, as a result, the scarcity of available patients for clinical testing.

“Five percent of the world’s research sites are conducting the vast majority of today’s clinical trials. When you consider that the average cost of bringing a drug to market is around $2 billion, with about two-thirds of those costs tied to clinical trials, it’s clear there’s an urgent need for greater efficiency,” said Inato Co-Founder and CEO Kourosh Davarpanah. “Our mission is to bring new doctors and their patients into the clinical research ecosystem to unlock the potential of the many unengaged research sites—so biopharma can bring innovative therapies to market faster.”

Inato will use the funding to expand its predictive capabilities to match the right sites with the right studies and develop a comprehensive network of clinicians worldwide. “There are thousands of sites around the world that are fully capable of recruiting patients but are currently not taking part in the research process,” said Davarpanah.

As a part of the financing, Nan Li, managing director at Obvious Ventures, has joined Inato’s board of directors. “Inato recognizes that the future of clinical trials is sitting right in front of us. Their managed marketplace approach ensures that sites are selected based on merit and their ability to contribute towards the only outcome that matters: enrolling patients and helping to get treatments to market,” said Nan Li, Managing Director with Obvious Ventures. “There is a long history of manual, inefficient marketplaces being streamlined by technology – clinical trials is next, and may be the most important category of them all.”