Swedish fund Norrsken has invested 5 million euros in Biorce, in line with its policy of supporting companies “that tackle the world’s biggest problems with bold ideas and innovative technology”.  This Barcelona-based health technology startup uses artificial intelligence to revolutionise clinical trials and speed up the delivery of new treatments to patients.

As the fund points out, “bringing a new treatment to market takes over 10 years and costs more than 1 billion euros”. In the meantime, many patients are still waiting for access to these new treatments. This is a human cost that could be reduced by Biorce’s proposal, which aims to help the pharmaceutical industry cut clinical trial times by up to 50%.

Expansion to the United States
After raising 3.5 million euros in November 2024 in a seed round led by YZR Capital and Mustard Seed Maze, Norrsken has announced a further contribution of 5 million euros to fuel Biorce’s next stage of growth. The Spanish company’s plans include expansion to the United States, expanding its engineering and sales teams, boosting product development and driving revenues into eight-digit figures.

Tove Larsson, General Partner at Norrsken, explained, “Biorce is precisely the kind of pioneering company we support. They combine deep industry expertise with cutting-edge AI to provide solutions to challenges that really matter. Its platform has the potential to dramatically reduce both the time and cost of bringing new treatments to market, generating enormous value for the pharmaceutical industry and, more importantly, faster access to life-saving therapies for patients.”

Designing and conducting clinical trials
Biorce’s proposal redefines the process of designing and conducting clinical trials. Its AI- native platform, Jarvis, simplifies and streamlines the entire process, from patient recruitment to protocol design and trial site selection. By extracting information from over 530,000 clinical studies, it helps trial teams make smarter decisions from the start, avoiding costly detours later on.

Saving time reduces the number and cost of errors, and makes it easier to bring new therapies to market up to 50% faster compared with current figures, which indicate that up to 70% of trials are delayed before they even start, and almost 60% face costly modifications during the process.

Outcomes for patients
The financial risk for pharmaceutical companies is great, but the human cost is even greater because every delay slows down access to life-saving treatments. Sometimes the problem lies in poorly designed protocols, lack of communication at test sites and avoidable operational errors.

Biorce Founder and CEO Pedro Coelho said, “We are addressing the root causes of delays and inefficiency in clinical trials: problems that cost time, money and, ultimately, lives. Our solution reduces complexity, shortens turnaround times and improves patient outcomes.

^{Photo: Norrsken}