The University of Leeds spinout will more than double its Nexus team as it takes virtual patient testing from the heart to the brain.
University of Leeds spinout adsilico has raised £10m in a Series A round to take its virtual patient technology for testing medical implants beyond the heart. Northern Gritstone invested £5m, with PXN Ventures and Parkwalk also backing the round, Northern Gritstone announced on 26 October. The adsilico Leeds team, based at the Nexus innovation hub, plans to grow from 14 to 34 people.
Why This Matters For Leeds
Leeds university research is producing medtech firms that can raise Series A money from northern investors and stay in the city. For AI and simulation specialists, 20 new roles at Nexus give another reason to build a career here rather than move south. The next marker is turning early projects into repeat contracts.
How adsilico Leeds tests implants on virtual patients
Heart valves, stents and other implants usually reach the market after clinical trials of a few hundred patients. Northern Gritstone points to a JAMA Internal Medicine study of 195 trials of high-risk implants in which women made up 33% of participants, falling to 29% in cardiovascular trials.
The company’s Virtual Chimera platform uses generative AI to build virtual hearts and blood vessels from anonymised clinical scans, then simulates how a device behaves inside each one. The virtual populations vary by age, sex, ethnicity, body size and disease, so a manufacturer can see how an implant performs in a defined group before it reaches a real patient. Device makers can use the results to decide which sizes to produce or to identify higher-risk patients before committing to clinical trials.
The new money will take the work into brain devices such as flow diverters, used to treat brain aneurysms, where trial numbers are smallest. The company has already completed projects with heart valve and neurovascular device makers.
Sheena Macpherson, chief executive and co-founder, said: “This investment enables us to grow our team and extend our reach beyond virtual hearts into new therapy areas. Our mission is for our virtual populations to reflect real-world diversity, helping make implantable device testing faster, safer and more equitable for the patients who need it.”
“adsilico’s use of generative AI to build realistic virtual hearts and blood vessels provides vital information to help understand how these products will work much earlier, spotting potential problems before committing to costly human trials.”
Duncan Johnson, CEO, Northern Gritstone
Northern backers return for a bigger round
PXN Ventures, the venture arm of PXN Group, which has a Leeds office, joins two returning backers. Northern Gritstone and Parkwalk Advisors provided a £3.5m seed round in 2024, when the business spun out. Northern Gritstone, set up by the universities of Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield to back spinouts, put in £2m of that.
The round follows MicroLub’s $10m raise in September, which Northern Gritstone also backed. It adds weight to a West Yorkshire healthtech cluster that relaunched in July to chase investment.
Regulation is moving the same way. An independent UK review found that bias in device design may leave some groups with sub-optimal treatment, while the US Food and Drug Administration has published guidance on using computer modelling as evidence. The adsilico Leeds team’s cardiac work will next be presented at TCT, a global meeting on structural heart therapies.
- Learn more about adsilico: adsilico.uk
Sources: Northern Gritstone announcement, 26 October 2026; Northern Gritstone seed investment announcement, February 2024; Companies House, ADSILICO LIMITED 14263453
