Recursion raises $200m, reports FAP and cancer trial updates

Recursion Pharmaceuticals has completed a $200 million oversubscribed follow-on equity offering, drawing in a roster of specialist healthcare investors including Janus Henderson Investors, ARK Invest, Invus, Longaeva Partners, and Driehaus Capital Management. The proceeds extend the Salt Lake City company's cash runway into 2029, adding to an existing cash position of approximately $561 million as of 30 September 2026.

The fundraise was accompanied by a cluster of clinical and partnership disclosures that the company is positioning as evidence its AI-enabled discovery platform is translating into differentiated medicines.

REC-4881 in FAP: upper GI data in focus

The headline clinical update concerns REC-4881, an oral MEK1/2 inhibitor being evaluated in Familial Adenomatous Polyposis, a hereditary condition in which patients develop hundreds of gastrointestinal polyps and face near-certain colorectal cancer without prophylactic surgery. There are no approved pharmacological therapies for FAP; Recursion estimates the addressable market at up to $15 billion, though investors should treat company-derived market-sizing figures with caution.

In the expanded adult cohort of the Phase 1b/2 TUPELO study, 87% of patients showed reductions in total polyp burden after 12 weeks at 4 mg once daily, with a 47% median reduction. The durability signal is notable: 85% of patients remained below their baseline polyp count after a 12-week off-treatment period at week 25.

Upper GI data, presented for the first time, were particularly striking. Among 12 evaluable patients, 92% showed upper GI polyp burden reductions; two achieved reductions of 98% or more. Upper GI disease carries the highest morbidity in post-colectomy FAP patients, owing to risks of haemorrhage and perforation during polyp removal and elevated cancer risk. At week 25, 92% of patients in this group remained below baseline.

The safety profile appears manageable for a chronic-use setting. No treatment-related adverse events above Grade 3 were observed; the most frequent events were dermatitis, rash, CPK elevation, diarrhoea, and asymptomatic reductions in left ventricular ejection fraction. Recursion said it aims to initiate a registrational trial in the second half of 2027, pending FDA discussions, with further detail expected later this year.

REC-1245 and the Sanofi milestone

In oncology, the Phase 1 DAHLIA trial of REC-1245, an oral RBM39 molecular glue degrader, has returned early signals of monotherapy activity. At doses of 45 mg once daily or higher, two confirmed partial responses were observed in endometrial cancer and one unconfirmed response in hepatocellular carcinoma. The disease control rate in this cohort was 91.7%. Recursion has selected 45 mg as the expansion dose, with an endometrial cancer cohort the near-term priority. Expansion data are expected in the second half of 2027.

Separately, Sanofi has exercised its option on the first development candidate to emerge from the two companies' multi-programme research collaboration. The candidate is a small molecule targeting a dual inflammatory-disease mechanism; Sanofi will fund and lead Phase 1 development, anticipated to start in 2027. The option triggered a $10 million milestone payment, bringing cumulative upfront and milestone payments under the collaboration to $144 million. Recursion remains eligible for more than $300 million in further milestones and low double-digit royalties on net sales if the candidate reaches market.

Competitive and regulatory context

Recursion operates in an increasingly crowded AI-driven drug discovery field, alongside companies such as Exscientia, Insilico Medicine, and Isomorphic Labs, as well as large-cap incumbents that have built substantial internal AI capabilities. The differentiating claim Recursion makes is integration: a unified platform spanning biology, chemistry, and clinical development, generating proprietary multimodal data at industrial scale from automated laboratories in Salt Lake City and Oxford.

The FAP programme benefits from FDA Orphan Drug and Fast Track designations, which provide expedited review pathways and potential exclusivity incentives. In the rare-disease space, these designations meaningfully de-risk the regulatory timeline, though the registrational study design and primary endpoint still need to be agreed with the agency. Full TUPELO data will be presented at the Collaborative Group of the Americas on Inherited Gastrointestinal Cancer annual meeting on 2 November.