Recursion Acquires Vium Bolstering Its Efforts to Industrialize Drug Discovery

July 28, 2020 at 8:00 AM EDT

SALT LAKE CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Recursion, a digital biology™ company leading in the industrialization of drug discovery, today announced its acquisition of Vium, a digital vivarium™ company. Vium’s platform combines computer vision, machine learning and sensor technologies to non-invasively collect and derive insights from digital biomarkers in preclinical in vivo research. Recursion’s acquisition of Vium signals continued and rapid integration of advanced technologies to grow its drug discovery pipeline of over 30 programs along with programs developed jointly with large pharmaceutical partners.

Recursion acquires Vium bolstering its efforts to industrialize drug discovery.

“Technology is set to change the pace, scale and cost of drug discovery over the coming decades. At Recursion, we are building a vast machine to rapidly discover drugs through the integration of technology at every step in the process,” said Chris Gibson, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of Recursion. “Bringing the fantastic team at Vium in-house will enable us to build on our core technology and vision, augmenting our huge in vitro datasets with large, complementary in vivo datasets, and advancing our mission to decode biology to radically improve patient lives.”

"Recursion and Vium share a common vision that delivering better therapies to patients faster requires an industrialization of the drug discovery process,” said Laura Schaevitz, CEO of Vium. “We are transforming preclinical research through the creation of a scalable in vivo platform to collect continuous, high-quality datasets where traditionally researchers would have limited data available. We are excited to focus exclusively on building a large in vivo data set for Recursion’s digital biology platform, potentially enabling an even broader pipeline of medicines."

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

About Recursion

Recursion is a digital biology company industrializing drug discovery. Recursion does this by combining automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, in vivo validation capabilities and a highly cross-functional team to discover novel medicines that expand our collective understanding of biology. Recursion’s rich, relatable database of petabytes of biological images generated in-house on the company’s robotics platform enables advanced machine learning approaches to reveal drug candidates, mechanisms of action, novel chemistry, and potential toxicity, with the eventual goal of decoding biology and advancing new therapeutics that radically improve people’s lives. Recursion is proudly headquartered in Salt Lake City. Learn more at www.recursionpharma.com, or connect on Twitter and LinkedIn.

About Vium

Vium is the first company to create a fully digital end to end Digital Vivarium® platform which is transforming in vivo research. The Vium Digital Vivarium, Vium Cloud, and online Research Suite empower scientists to optimize advances in bioengineered research models in ways previously not possible. Vium is fully accredited by AAALAC International and received an unprecedented AAALAC commendation for upholding the ‘3 Rs’, the gold-standard framework for humane animal research. Customers run the spectrum of biotechnology, pharmaceutical and computational drug discovery companies, academia, and novel therapeutic labs. Vium is backed by leading investors, including Lux Capital, Data Collective, Dolby Family Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, Founders Fund, and Future Shape LLC. Vium is headquartered in San Mateo, California. Visit Vium at www.vium.com.