Startups Reducing the Cost of Transcriptomics Studies, Monitioring Continously Glucose, Creating Photon-Counting Arrays and Converting Sunlight into Fuel Each win ChF 10,000
29.04.2020
Alithea Genomics, Nutrix, Pi Imaging Technology and SoHHytec Teams win Venture Kick’s financial and entrepreneurial support. Their projects provide cost-efficient transcriptomics solutions for biomedical pharmaceutical research, give people the chance to monitor their health, envision to transform the way photons are counted, and utilize only the sun and water for solar fuel production.
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 Alithea Genomics' Co-Founders: Daniel Alpern, PhD, CEO, Riccardo Dainese, PhD, CTO and Bart Deplancke, PhD, Full Professor,
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.jpg) Nutrix: Maria Hahn CEO & Founder and Jemish Parmar Co-Founder CTO
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 Pi Imaging Team: Dr. Ivan Michel Antolovic (CEO), Dr. Claudio Bruschini, Prof. Edoardo Charbon and Dr. Ron Hoebe
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 SoHHytec Saurabh Tembhurne CEO and Prof. Sophia Haussener CSA
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Alithea Genomics: cost-efficient transcriptomics solutions for biomedical research and the pharmaceutical industry
Alithea Genomics: EPFL's spin-off Alithea Genomics was launched by Daniel Alpern, PhD, CEO, Riccardo Dainese, PhD, CTO and Bart Deplancke, PhD, Full Professor, CSO, to address the need of academic and industrial biomedical R&D labs, drug screening facilities of pharma companies and biobanks to analyze large sets of samples, transforming them into actionable molecular data. The high cost of sample preparation for next-generation RNA sequencing is still restrictive and hindering the adaptation of transcriptomics in studies involving multitudes of samples including high-throughput drug screening or biomarker discovery. To address this, Alithea Genomics is developing cost-efficient, large-scale transcriptomics solutions for biomedical and pharmaceutical research focused on biomarker discovery and drug development, thereby enabling fundamental and clinical research projects that were economically and practically unfeasible before. Alithea Genomics’ main focus is thus to provide R&D platforms with more complete high content actionable data, therefore rendering biobank functionalization and drug screening efforts more amenable to insightful discoveries.
With the Venture Kick funds, Alithea Genomics will continue to optimize their transcriptomics solutions, aiming to for example further decrease the amount of sequencing needed for each sample, and thus also the per sample cost.
Nutrix: the future of glucose monitoring
Today, it is only when you are unwell that you get information from your doctor. What if we could all monitor our health before? Maria Hahn, CEO & Founder came up with the idea of Nutrix after a MIT bootcamp and continued to work with Nikhil Singh, Co-Founder; Marketing and Jemish Parmar, Co-Founder; CTO on the idea of high tech nanosensor that detects glucose level in the saliva and transfers information to an external app.
Nutrix is pain-free, non-invasive, and patient-friendly for diabetics and opens the market for wearable biosensors. Nutrix won the 2019 Web Summit PITCH competition for the most ambitious early- stage startup among 900+ participants, and was chosen as the 2019 Unicorn Start Up Winner, sponsored by Siemens. Also, Nutrix was chosen to be part of the Basel Swiss Area accelerator program for digital health startups.
In the next few months, the support from Venture Kick will be used to work on the nanosenor prototype to validate the nano-surface of the sensor with multiple measurements.
Nutrix is pain-free, non-invasive, and patient-friendly for diabetics and opens the market for wearable biosensors. Nutrix won the 2019 Web Summit PITCH competition for the most ambitious early- stage startup among 900+ participants, and was chosen as the 2019 Unicorn Start Up Winner, sponsored by Siemens. Also, Nutrix was chosen to be part of the Basel Swiss Area accelerator program for digital health startups.
In the next few months, the support from Venture Kick will be used to work on the nanosenor prototype to validate the nano-surface of the sensor with multiple measurements.
Pi Imaging Technology: creating higly efficient photon-counting arrays
Pi Imaging Technology, founded by Dr. Ivan Michel Antolovic (CEO), Dr. Claudio Bruschini, Prof. Edoardo Charbon and Dr. Ron Hoebe is an EPFL spin-off creating highly efficient photon-counting arrays. CMOS technology enables designs to have unlimited number of pixels and adaptable architectures. Pi Imaging is at the forefront of the quantum revolution and envisions to transform the way photons are counted.
Their product is a photon-counting array integrated in standard CMOS technology, fully scalable to large arrays. Pi Imaging operates as a fabless semiconductor company, providing the photon-counting array as an OEM to companies selling systems to end customers. They have a working prototype that was tested by customers. The next steps are to work on a plug-and-play product and reliability.
The funds from Venture Kick will be used for further mechanical packaging and software development.
Their product is a photon-counting array integrated in standard CMOS technology, fully scalable to large arrays. Pi Imaging operates as a fabless semiconductor company, providing the photon-counting array as an OEM to companies selling systems to end customers. They have a working prototype that was tested by customers. The next steps are to work on a plug-and-play product and reliability.
The funds from Venture Kick will be used for further mechanical packaging and software development.
SoHHytec: Caterer for Solar Fuel
SoHHytec is a spin-off from LRESE lab at EPFL. Dr. Saurabh Tembhurne is CEO and lead inventor of the technology which he developed during his PhD. The team is also composed of Dr. Meng Lin, CTO, Prof. Sophia Haussener, CSA and Mr. Daniel Brandenburger, Business Advisor. SoHHytec is a caterer for solar fuel and energy needs providing innovative renewable systems for onsite production of solar Fuel (Hydrogen, Oxygen) and Power (Electricity, Heat). The innovative patented technology is based on integrated photo-electrochemical device. SoHHytec’s product, called ‘Arb’, utilizes only the sun and water as the input resources and converts the (concentrated) sunlight into fuel by breaking the water molecule while simultaneously producing electricity and heat. Its device shows high solar-to-fuel and solar-to-electricity efficiency, works at unprecedented power and current density, and provides cost-effective fuel and power production, all with a realistic potential for long-term stability. It caters to the needs of wide industrial (fertilizer & chemical, mobility, metal & food etc.) as well as residential sectors. The current product scale pilot is being completed at EPFL and will be fully functional in around 4 months.
Venture Kick funds are planned for business model optimization, first strategic partner and customer acquisition in varied geographical regions, and market analysis.