Innovative Projects Win in Noise-Cancellation, Blood Diagnostics, Truffles and Growth-Hormones

AVAtronics Sarl

If you've ever sought silence when concentrating at work, teleconferencing with colleagues or sleeping on a long-haul flight, you know existing noise canceling solutions aren't good enough. That's because average human hearing ranges from 20Hz to 20kHz, but current technologies can only cancel a small portion of this bandwidth. In the case of headphones this is only up to 1kHz, whereas office chatter can reach 4 kHz.

 

AVAtronics has developed a novel electro-acoustic modelling and predictive filtering algorithm, which increases the bandwidth of its noise filters, and separates speech from background noise while using teleconference units, smart-speakers, or hearing aids in noisy environments. The entrepreneurs are targeting the hundreds of millions of consumer electronics devices sold worldwide. They plan to close their first financing soon, to expand the team and apply their noise-cancelation tech to the headphone, hearing aid, and automotive industries. 

 

Endotelix Diagnostics Sarl

Diagnostic tests and treatments for Antiphospholipid Syndrome (APS), an autoimmune disorder that affects about 5 percent of the population. APS is often not diagnosed, despite being the leading cause of strokes among young adults, and increasing the risk of miscarrying during pregnancy.

 

Endotelix Diagnostics' co-founders, Karim Brandt and Marc Moghbel, have developed a rapid, simply and highly-sensitive diagnosis tool that will allow suffers to access the best treatment. Their patented technology uses a single drop of blood to detect the circulating antibodies. Its diagnosis can be performed in 20 minutes at the point-of-care, compared to the week-long delays and uncertainty faced by patients whose samples have to be sent to a lab.

 

Nectariss Sarl

The food market lacks natural flavors. Nectariss calls itself an authentic flavor startup, which creates flavors from their original sources. It's first market focuses on a $50-100 million segment of the $1 billion truffle industry.

 

"Eighty percent of products labeled as containing truffles have synthetic flavors, and the remaining twenty percent use 'natural ingredients' which are usually a combination of flavors derived from seafood and vegetables that just mimic the truffle-aroma," says co-founder and food scientist Richard Splivallo. As consumers become aware of this, and discover the depth and complexity of real truffles, demand for authentic flavors will grow, he says.

 

The startup has patented technology and European regulatory approval to ferment seven species of truffle, to create stable and authentic flavors. The team plans to scale its pilot, securing business partnerships and scout sites for organic truffle orchards in the canton of Vaud.

 

Prolongate

Protein drugs treat disorders such as diabetes and growth deficiency. This class of drug has two disadvantages: oral forms don't survive digestion, so patients need to inject them; and they need to be injected often, because the kidneys flush them out too quickly.

 

Prolongate's patented technology keeps such drugs in the body longer, by adding a sugar polymer layer around them. The ETH spin-off has engineered bacteria that produce and sugar-coat the drug in a single step. This innovation may mean that children who need to take growth hormones for years, can reduce the frequency of their injections from once a day, to once a week.

 

"The application of science interests me. I'm fascinated by how to create a bigger business and a living from an idea from the lab," said co-founder Michael Wetter, who spent almost a decade at GlycoVaxyn AG, from being an early hire through to its $212m sale to GlaxoSmithKline. 

 

The daily growth hormone drugs market is worth about $3 billion annually. Prolongate plans to raise $2-3 million to bring its lead candidate towards clinical studies.