(Sharecast News) - Intellectual property-based business developer IP Group announced on Thursday that its portfolio company Genomics has confirmed that Vertex Pharmaceuticals has led an oversubscribed £25m Series B financing round, and signed a three-year collaboration agreement.The FTSE 250 company described Genomics, a spin-out from the University of Oxford, as a data science company specialising in the use of human genetic information to improve drug development.It said the collaboration with Vertex would further advance Vertex's efforts to develop transformative medicines for people with serious diseases.Other investors in the £25.0m financing, alongside IP Group, comprised Woodford Investment Management, Invesco Perpetual, Oxford Sciences Innovation (OSI), Lansdowne Partners and Tanarra.Genomics would use the proceeds of the fundraising to enable further expansion, to continue to enhance its database and to pursue opportunities that emerged in what IP Group described as a "fast-growing" space.IP Group and its managed fund, IP Venture Fund II, committed £1.4m and £0.6m respectively to the fundraising.Following completion of the financing round, IP Group's undiluted beneficial holding of 12.4% in Genomics was valued at £9.0m and IP Venture Fund II's 5.3% holding was valued at £3.8m.As a result of the group's 33% limited partnership interest in IP Venture Fund II, its effective beneficial interest in Genomics was approximately 14.2%."Genomics has developed a unique analysis engine which uses genetics to understand human biology and the likely efficacy and safety of potential novel medicines," said IP Group's board."The Genomics engine is the largest of its kind in the world, with over 100 billion data points."It links human genetic variation at over 14 million positions in the human genome to changes in 7,000 molecular, cellular, and physiological measurements and disease outcomes."IP Group said the company used "breakthrough" proprietary machine learning and statistical algorithms to predict the impact of therapeutic interventions.It said scientists from Vertex and Genomics would work closely together to incorporate their "deep understanding" of human genetics into research and development related to target discovery and target validation in certain diseases.Both companies would also have the opportunity to suggest additional diseases for the collaboration, where human genetic evidence may be particularly powerful."In addition to funding the resources committed by Genomics to the collaboration, Vertex will make milestone and royalty payments to the company for novel targets resulting from the collaboration that are taken through clinical development."