CHF 40,000 for startups developing a breath collector to better diagnose infectious lung diseases, mechanistic-based microbial strains to alleviate bloating and intestinal discomfort, and novel immunosuppressive compounds
03.11.2021
Avelo, SURI BioTech (formerly BactoKind), and NextImmune win Venture Kick's second financial and entrepreneurial support stage. Their projects establish a point-of-need breath collector for better diagnosis of infectious lung diseases, help reduce bloating and intestinal discomfort in the intestine of colic babies, and hold the potential to minimize the side effects while effectively suppressing alloimmune and autoimmune responses.
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 Avelo's CEO Melanie Aregger and CTO Tobias Broger
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 SURI BioTech CEO Vanesa Natalin Rocha Martin
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 NextImmune’s co-founder and Chief Science Officer, Rajesh Jayachandran
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Avelo: establishing a breath test for fast and actionable infectious disease diagnosis in primary care
20% of all primary care consultations worldwide are due to respiratory infections. They result in 4 million annual deaths mainly due to lower respiratory tract infections causing pneumonia. Currently used samples limit their diagnosis as they miss lower tract infections, are hard to obtain, or highly invasive.
Avelo's co-founders CEO Melanie Aregger and CTO Tobias Broger with the help of Prof. Dr. Adlhart’s Functional Materials and Nanotechnology group at ZHAW and a renowned advisory board of infectious disease & IVD experts are tackling these issues. Avelo develops a breath aerosol collector, AveloCollectTM, for non-invasive and accurate diagnosis of lower respiratory tract infections in primary care. AveloCollect enables doctors for the first time to sample the patient’s entire respiratory tract directly in their office and send the sample to their standard clinical lab for PCR testing. The lab results enable them to select the right treatment, keep and manage the patient directly in their practice and only refer severe cases to the hospital. This improves patient outcomes, safes healthcare costs and reduces the >65% of unnecessarily prescribed antibiotics in primary care.
Their analysis indicates a global market potential in primary care of USD2.3 billion for lower respiratory tract infections (LRTIs) and USD5.8 billion for all respiratory infections by 2025 growing at ca. 7% p.a. There is no non-invasive and rapid sampling method based on breath to capture LRTIs in primary care on the market.
Venture Kick’s financing will help Avelo until they can secure the seed round. The proceeds will be used to establish breath as a novel specimen in a clinical study and launch the CE-IVD marked product by 2023. avelolife.com
SURI BioTech: develops natural probiotics with clear mechanisms that alleviate bloating and intestinal discomfort
SURI BioTech is developing health-promoting bacterial strains (probiotics) with a unique mechanism of action. Their proprietary strains reduce the production of hydrogen gas by intestinal microorganisms – with potential applications in multiple functional gastrointestinal disorders (e.g. infant colic, lactose intolerance). Their lead candidate “BactoKind”, has been rationally designed to alleviate Infant Colic. Colic infants are babies that cry excessively during the first months of life due to digestion discomfort and thereby severely impacting the babies and parents’ health and well-being. BactoKind formulation, a consortium of bacterial strains, impacts the metabolism of the gut microbiome, reducing gas production, bloating and associated pain and consequent crying in babies. CEO Dr. Vanesa Rocha Martin, Pioneer Fellow ETH, Mathilde Kunz Business developer, and Research Assistant Veronica Zimmermann, are developing BactoKind based on strong scientific background and data built on studies involving infant cohorts, animal and in vitro models done in collaboration with Prof. Ing. Christophe Lacroix - Head of the Food Biotechnology Lab ETH, and Prof. Dr. Christian Braegger - Head Gastroenterology and Nutrition - Children's Hospital Zurich (KISPI).
Regarding the primary application of BactoKind, infant colic, it is estimated that this condition has an incidence of 20% in babies aged under 5 months and it affects them for as long as 12 weeks. This results in a Total Addressable Market (TAM) of 28 M colic babies worldwide and ca. 3.7 Bn USD per year.
The Venture Kick funds will be used to produce the first batch of BactoKind at a contract manufacturing organization and for formulation and packaging prototyping. The resulting product prototype will serve as proof of concept of scalability allowing them to look for their first partnerships with distributors.
NextImmune: Developing novel immunosuppressive compounds for autoimmune diseases and transplant rejection
Currently available immunosuppressants for the treatment of autoimmune-inflammatory disorders, organ rejection following transplantation and Graft versus Host Disease (GvHD) carry a high risk for side effects and toxicity (opportunistic infections, development of cancer, renal, hepatic and cardiotoxicity).
NextImmune aims to circumvent these issues with the generation of a first-in-class compounds targeting a recently discovered T cell activation pathway that holds the potential to minimize the above-mentioned side effects while effectively suppressing alloimmune and autoimmune responses.
The Venture Kick funds will be used with the objective of preclinical development of the lead compound and validation in preclinical disease models.