March 30, 2023 – Inato, the leading technology platform enabling access to inclusive clinical trials, today announced the close of $20 million in Series A2 funding from existing and new investors. The fundraise includes return and lead investor Cathay Innovation, return investor Obvious Ventures, as well as new investors La Maison and Top Harvest Capital.
The new funding will fuel Inato’s continued product innovation, international growth, and hiring of top talent. Inato will advance its diversity product offering to enable sponsors to strategically meet their diversity goals based on new FDA requirements. The company will also invest in oncology-specific innovation to increase access to care where, despite the number of oncology studies increasing at almost twice the pace of any other therapeutic area, enrollment rates remain startlingly low. Inato will also further define and scale its data model to continue to improve matching reliability between community sites and sponsor trials.
Today, 70% of clinical research happens at the same 5% of sites, and only 5% of patients participate in a clinical trial. This lack of patient access causes trial delays and costs to skyrocket, ultimately constraining medical innovation and patient diversity. Only 4% of clinical trials in recent years have used a representative population, impacting a drug’s efficacy and safety.
“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,” said 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.”
“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,” said 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.”
“At Obvious, we support entrepreneurs solving humanity’s biggest challenges — and Inato is doing just that,” said Rohan Ganesh, partner at Obvious Ventures. “Inato is playing a critical role in enabling clinical research to keep pace with patient diversity and inclusion, along with being really technologically innovative.”
Launched in late 2020, 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. Inato has formed partnerships with a third of the top 30 pharmaceutical companies to make their medical research more accessible, inclusive, and efficient.
About Inato
Inato makes clinical trials more accessible, inclusive, and efficient for patients, community-based clinical researchers, and pharmaceutical companies across the globe. By enabling community research sites to more efficiently and effectively select the right opportunities for them, Inato is helping bring the right trials to patients — regardless of who they are or where they live. To do this, the Inato platform connects global pharmaceutical companies with a broader range of community research sites, while ensuring reliable high performance through collaborative, evidence-based enrollment planning and ongoing support. For more information, visit Inato.com or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
About Cathay Innovation
Cathay Innovation is a global venture capital firm, created in affiliation with Cathay Capital, investing in startups at the center of the digital revolution across North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Its global platform unifies technology investment across continents, investors, entrepreneurs and leading corporations to accelerate startup growth with access to new markets, invaluable industry knowledge and introductions to potential partners from the start. As a multistage fund with over $2B assets under management and offices across San Francisco, New York, Paris, Shanghai, Beijing and Singapore, Cathay Innovation partners with visionary entrepreneurs and startups positively impacting the world through technology. To learn more, please visit www.cathayinnovation.com or follow us on Twitter @Cathayinnov.