Discover the new venture case winners: A novel drug class for the treatment of autoimmune diseases and eye-inspired visual tracking systems for smart glasses and micro aerial vehicles
08.10.2014
Polyneuron Pharmaceuticals and Insightness are the winners of the second stage of venture kick. They obtained CHF 20’000 of pre-seed capital last week and are now qualified for the next stage to win: The venture kick final. They may obtain CHF 100’000 more if they are successful.
 The team of Polyneuron Pharmaceuticals
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 Christian and Marc from Insightness
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A new drug class for the treatment of autoimmune disorders
Polyneuron Pharmaceuticals is an early-stage biotech which develops a novel drug class for effective and safe treatment of autoimmune diseases, in particular autoimmune diseases of the nervous system. The spin-off from the University of Basel meets an urgent medical need in this area, and their technology platform "Antibody-catch" paves the way for a paradigm shift in treatment. Today, most of the existing immunosuppressive treatments (also used to fight cancer) are a heavy burden for patients due to treatment' side effects. Polyneuron Pharmaceutical’s compounds have the potential to selectively “catch” disease-causing antibodies and suppress their production in patients with autoimmune disorders. Polyneuron's first drug candidate has the potential for a major breakthrough in the development of targeted treatments for antibody-mediated autoimmune disorders. The startup also came in 4th position of the venture startup competition this year together with other venture kick and venturelab talented young companies such as L.E.S.S., Saman Tree Technologies, Flyability and rqmicro.
Insightess: Eye-inspired sight for smart devices
ETH and University of Zurich-based startup Insightess develops eye-inspired visual tracking systems for smart glasses and micro aerial vehicles such as drones. These systems allow smart glasses to display smooth augmented reality on a low power bugdet. Their technology, called the Silicon Eye, is inspired by the way our eyes process visual information and allows fast and efficient visual perception of the environment. The vision system detects characteristic landmarks (keypoints) and tracks their position within a few milliseconds. Each system consists of a specialized vision chip (similar to the cameras in a cell phone) and software to process the information. These fast and low-power vision systems can be employed in many different areas such as mobile robotics, augmented reality glasses or virtual reality glasses. The team of Insightness already protected their Silicon Eye Technology with one patent, and two are underway. Here is what Christian Brändli and Marc Osswald told us as we met them after the jury’s verdict last week: "We are very happy to have succeeded in the second stage of venture kick and also excited as we now obtained the possibility to showcase our technology in the Silicon Valley. We profited a lot from the venture kick program so far, especially from the honest feedback received at the kickers camp: We are looking forward to participating to the next one.”
Polyneuron Pharmaceuticals is an early-stage biotech which develops a novel drug class for effective and safe treatment of autoimmune diseases, in particular autoimmune diseases of the nervous system. The spin-off from the University of Basel meets an urgent medical need in this area, and their technology platform "Antibody-catch" paves the way for a paradigm shift in treatment. Today, most of the existing immunosuppressive treatments (also used to fight cancer) are a heavy burden for patients due to treatment' side effects. Polyneuron Pharmaceutical’s compounds have the potential to selectively “catch” disease-causing antibodies and suppress their production in patients with autoimmune disorders. Polyneuron's first drug candidate has the potential for a major breakthrough in the development of targeted treatments for antibody-mediated autoimmune disorders. The startup also came in 4th position of the venture startup competition this year together with other venture kick and venturelab talented young companies such as L.E.S.S., Saman Tree Technologies, Flyability and rqmicro.
Insightess: Eye-inspired sight for smart devices
ETH and University of Zurich-based startup Insightess develops eye-inspired visual tracking systems for smart glasses and micro aerial vehicles such as drones. These systems allow smart glasses to display smooth augmented reality on a low power bugdet. Their technology, called the Silicon Eye, is inspired by the way our eyes process visual information and allows fast and efficient visual perception of the environment. The vision system detects characteristic landmarks (keypoints) and tracks their position within a few milliseconds. Each system consists of a specialized vision chip (similar to the cameras in a cell phone) and software to process the information. These fast and low-power vision systems can be employed in many different areas such as mobile robotics, augmented reality glasses or virtual reality glasses. The team of Insightness already protected their Silicon Eye Technology with one patent, and two are underway. Here is what Christian Brändli and Marc Osswald told us as we met them after the jury’s verdict last week: "We are very happy to have succeeded in the second stage of venture kick and also excited as we now obtained the possibility to showcase our technology in the Silicon Valley. We profited a lot from the venture kick program so far, especially from the honest feedback received at the kickers camp: We are looking forward to participating to the next one.”