Cori Clinical secures $4M seed to improve clinical trial design and cut delays

Cori Clinical, an AI platform dedicated to enhancing clinical trial design, has recently secured $4 million in seed funding. The investment round was led by Breega, with additional support from Enzo, Heartfelt, Together Ventures and Bynd. Cori's primary focus is on addressing the fragmented processes and disconnected sources of information that often plague the clinical trial design and setup phases.

Founded by CEO Jorn Jansen Schoonhoven and CTO Patricio Fernández, Cori's AI workspace integrates an organization's knowledge from prior clinical trials with external intelligence from trial registries, regulatory guidance, and public sources such as the FDA, MHRA, and EMA. This comprehensive approach allows clinical teams to transform an initial trial brief into a complete protocol, submission package, and operational plan based on current regulatory guidance.

Rather than focusing solely on individual documents or workflows, Cori creates a "living blueprint" for a trial. This blueprint enables teams to assess proposed designs against past experience and external evidence, identify risks, and connect study-design decisions with budgets, timelines, and operational plans. By doing so, Cori aims to minimize duplicated work, avoidable rework, costs, and delays while providing clinical teams with greater visibility over trial planning.

According to internal modeling, Cori estimates that its approach could cut average trial set-up costs by at least 33%. The company's AI reviewer has also been benchmarked against amendments from completed trials, identifying 82% of protocol errors as avoidable. Currently, Cori collaborates with two of the world's five largest enterprise clinical research organizations (CROs), and its customers include Erasmus MC, an academic medical center and university hospital in Rotterdam.

Clinical trial design, according to Jansen Schoonhoven, involves a series of connected decisions, yet crucial knowledge often resides in various studies, teams, internal systems, and documents. Cori's platform consolidates this intelligence into a living blueprint, empowering teams to make better-informed decisions before potential problems escalate into delays.

This strategic approach ensures that the science never waits on the process. The company's recent addition of Dr. Emma Ogburn as Chief Clinical Officer brings valuable firsthand experience in addressing long clinical trial start-up timelines.

With the recently acquired seed funding, Cori will focus on expanding its delivery capacity, growing its team, and strengthening the regulatory and clinical intelligence within its platform. The investment will also facilitate broader commercial relationships with CROs and pharmaceutical companies, allowing Cori to further solidify its position in the clinical trial design and optimization space.