Startups developing lung cancer screening; pharma Ingredients made from renewable feedstock, smart cameras for automated quality control, next-gen Immunotherapy, and an innovative hardware project collaboration platform each get CHF 10,000
25.01.2024
OncoSwab, Phorest, Sentinus, Shape Biopharmaceuticals, and TofuPilot were selected at Venture Kick's first financial and entrepreneurial support stage. Their projects develop a non-invasive approach, targeting cancer-driven mutations through nasal fluid collection; aim to convert lignin selectively into valuable chemicals; provide smart cameras that can detect manual assembly steps during live production; combine immunobiology, chemistry, and medicine expertise to develop its medicines with state-of-the-art computer-aided drug design; and redefines hardware project collaboration, centralizing and interconnecting specialized data to make it actionable, speeding up development cycles for hardware teams.
 |
 |
 OncoSwab: CSO Pablo Lara and CEO Andrea Stephany
|
|
 Phorest: CEO Dr. Serhii Shyshkanov
|
|
 Sentinus: CTO Felix Schnarrenberger and CEO Jonas Conrad
|
|
 Shape Biopharmaceuticals: Co-founder and CEO Dr. Arin Ghasparian
|
|
 TofuPilot: from left to right, CTO Félix Berthier, Founders CEO Julien Buteau, and CCO Charlotte Evéquoz
|
|
OncoSwab: Reshaping lung cancer screening for early detection and accessibility.
Lung cancer alone is killing more people than prostate breast and colon cancer combined, yet traditional methods such as CT scans yield high false positive rates. They are often limited by their accessibility and availability, hindering timely diagnoses.
Founded by CEO Andrea Stephany, MSc, and CSO Pablo Lara, PhD, OncoSwab is developing a point-of-care test that can be performed in various healthcare settings. Their non-invasive approach, targeting cancer-driven mutations through nasal fluid collection, eliminates the need for specialized medical personnel and is suited for self-testing and telemedicine. By leveraging the direct link between nasal and bronchial epithelia, OncoSwab surpasses the limitations of invasive blood samples for early-stage detection, ensuring quicker results, lower costs, and heightened sensitivity.
Venture Kick funds will aid in developing a risk-stratification model, that uses biomarkers data to improve decision-making in the screening process.
Phorest: Pharma Ingredients Made from Renewable Feedstock
The pharmaceutical industry heavily relies on petroleum-derived raw materials. With approx. 200 kg of petroleum-derived feedstock is typically needed to produce just 1 kg of medicine. As a result, it falls short of meeting the growing demand for environmentally friendly solutions and contributes to tremendous waste generation and carbon emissions (~52 million tons of CO2 annually). Lignin, the Earth's second-most abundant plant polymer, can replace conventional petroleum-based resources. Yet, it is predominantly discarded as waste in multiple industries, for example, bioethanol production, due to scientific challenges in lignin chemical breakdown, thus, contributing to missed opportunities for value creation and improving sustainability.
Phorest, an EPFL spin-off project, led by Dr. Serhii Shyshkanov (CEO), is set to transform this overlooked renewable resource into a valuable asset for pharmaceutical research and manufacturing. Phorest’s versatile solution, based on a patented technology developed at EPFL, aims to convert lignin selectively into valuable chemicals, which can be used for the synthesis of pharmaceutical compounds. Moreover, the development of the project encompasses a comprehensive utilization of artificial intelligence tools to traverse the vast chemical landscape of potential products, streamline R&D, enhance sales efforts, and facilitate the exploration of novel product possibilities. This approach positions the startup to tap into a dynamic market estimated to exceed USD 4 billion in value.
The Venture Kick funds will be used to catalyze market analysis and business development efforts, ensuring a more strategic and informed approach to market entry.
Sentinus: Deep learning-based smart camera systems for automated quality control in manual assembly
Manual assembly is error-prone, especially in high-mix, low-volume production. Errors and error prevention create costs - costs that can be reduced by implementing deep-learning-based automated quality control.
Sentinus develops smart cameras that can detect manual assembly steps during live production, allowing for automated documentation, feedback on realized steps, and instructions on upcoming steps. The smart cameras are developed as add-ons to existing digital worker guidance systems, widening their application range. Around 50 million people are working in manual assembly. With some projections, the SOM is estimated at 500’000 workstations that would greatly benefit from camera-based support systems. The Sentinus founding team is made up of CEO Jonas Conrad and CTO Felix Schnarrenberger. Jonas is currently finalizing his PhD at ETH Zurich, where he is researching deep-learning applications in manual assembly. With a focus on machine learning for computer vision applications, Felix is in the final steps of his Master in robotics at ETH Zurich.
With the Venture Kick stage 1 funds they will widen their reach by investing in marketing material and realize pilot projects to gain early feedback for product development.
Shape Biopharmaceuticals: Redefining Immunotherapy
Shape Biopharmaceuticals focuses on developing innovative immunotherapies for chronic disease patients with high unmet treatment needs.
Shape’s immunotherapies are based on specifically engineered nanoparticles. These nanomedicines leverage the body's immune system to fight the disease. Shape combines immunobiology, chemistry, and medicine expertise to develop its medicines with state-of-the-art computer-aided drug design and engineering technologies. The company was founded by repeat biotech entrepreneurs and is managed by Dr. Arin Ghasparian (co-founder and CEO) and Dr. Armando Zuniga (co-founder and CSO), who both have longstanding leadership experience in innovative biotech companies and a track record of successfully developing novel vaccine and drug delivery technologies from scratch to clinic. Shape has built a broad international network of experts and works together with leading research groups in Switzerland and abroad to achieve its goals.
Shape plans to use Venture Kick financing to help accelerate product and business development.
TofuPilot: Accelerating Hardware Innovation
The world needs hardware innovation now more than ever, but bringing new products to market remains too slow. Hardware product teams looking to innovate quickly find traditional industrial approaches limiting and agile methodologies inadequate to hardware's unique challenges.
The TofuPilot platform redefines hardware project collaboration, centralizing and interconnecting specialized data to make it actionable, speeding up development cycles for hardware teams. Currently, in beta testing, it's gaining traction among ambitious Swiss startups and larger teams aiming for rapid innovation. The founders, CEO Julien Buteau and CCO Charlotte Evéquoz, met at senseFly and brought valuable insights from their experiences in launching complex hardware products in scaling organizations. Together with CTO Félix Berthier, their software answers the rising demand for agile and modern hardware development methodologies, fueled by the increasing complexity of technology and the expectation of shorter time-to-market across industries.
The Venture Kick funds will help TofuPilot supercharge its market entry.
Lung cancer alone is killing more people than prostate breast and colon cancer combined, yet traditional methods such as CT scans yield high false positive rates. They are often limited by their accessibility and availability, hindering timely diagnoses.
Founded by CEO Andrea Stephany, MSc, and CSO Pablo Lara, PhD, OncoSwab is developing a point-of-care test that can be performed in various healthcare settings. Their non-invasive approach, targeting cancer-driven mutations through nasal fluid collection, eliminates the need for specialized medical personnel and is suited for self-testing and telemedicine. By leveraging the direct link between nasal and bronchial epithelia, OncoSwab surpasses the limitations of invasive blood samples for early-stage detection, ensuring quicker results, lower costs, and heightened sensitivity.
Venture Kick funds will aid in developing a risk-stratification model, that uses biomarkers data to improve decision-making in the screening process.
Phorest: Pharma Ingredients Made from Renewable Feedstock
The pharmaceutical industry heavily relies on petroleum-derived raw materials. With approx. 200 kg of petroleum-derived feedstock is typically needed to produce just 1 kg of medicine. As a result, it falls short of meeting the growing demand for environmentally friendly solutions and contributes to tremendous waste generation and carbon emissions (~52 million tons of CO2 annually). Lignin, the Earth's second-most abundant plant polymer, can replace conventional petroleum-based resources. Yet, it is predominantly discarded as waste in multiple industries, for example, bioethanol production, due to scientific challenges in lignin chemical breakdown, thus, contributing to missed opportunities for value creation and improving sustainability.
Phorest, an EPFL spin-off project, led by Dr. Serhii Shyshkanov (CEO), is set to transform this overlooked renewable resource into a valuable asset for pharmaceutical research and manufacturing. Phorest’s versatile solution, based on a patented technology developed at EPFL, aims to convert lignin selectively into valuable chemicals, which can be used for the synthesis of pharmaceutical compounds. Moreover, the development of the project encompasses a comprehensive utilization of artificial intelligence tools to traverse the vast chemical landscape of potential products, streamline R&D, enhance sales efforts, and facilitate the exploration of novel product possibilities. This approach positions the startup to tap into a dynamic market estimated to exceed USD 4 billion in value.
The Venture Kick funds will be used to catalyze market analysis and business development efforts, ensuring a more strategic and informed approach to market entry.
Sentinus: Deep learning-based smart camera systems for automated quality control in manual assembly
Manual assembly is error-prone, especially in high-mix, low-volume production. Errors and error prevention create costs - costs that can be reduced by implementing deep-learning-based automated quality control.
Sentinus develops smart cameras that can detect manual assembly steps during live production, allowing for automated documentation, feedback on realized steps, and instructions on upcoming steps. The smart cameras are developed as add-ons to existing digital worker guidance systems, widening their application range. Around 50 million people are working in manual assembly. With some projections, the SOM is estimated at 500’000 workstations that would greatly benefit from camera-based support systems. The Sentinus founding team is made up of CEO Jonas Conrad and CTO Felix Schnarrenberger. Jonas is currently finalizing his PhD at ETH Zurich, where he is researching deep-learning applications in manual assembly. With a focus on machine learning for computer vision applications, Felix is in the final steps of his Master in robotics at ETH Zurich.
With the Venture Kick stage 1 funds they will widen their reach by investing in marketing material and realize pilot projects to gain early feedback for product development.
Shape Biopharmaceuticals: Redefining Immunotherapy
Shape Biopharmaceuticals focuses on developing innovative immunotherapies for chronic disease patients with high unmet treatment needs.
Shape’s immunotherapies are based on specifically engineered nanoparticles. These nanomedicines leverage the body's immune system to fight the disease. Shape combines immunobiology, chemistry, and medicine expertise to develop its medicines with state-of-the-art computer-aided drug design and engineering technologies. The company was founded by repeat biotech entrepreneurs and is managed by Dr. Arin Ghasparian (co-founder and CEO) and Dr. Armando Zuniga (co-founder and CSO), who both have longstanding leadership experience in innovative biotech companies and a track record of successfully developing novel vaccine and drug delivery technologies from scratch to clinic. Shape has built a broad international network of experts and works together with leading research groups in Switzerland and abroad to achieve its goals.
Shape plans to use Venture Kick financing to help accelerate product and business development.
TofuPilot: Accelerating Hardware Innovation
The world needs hardware innovation now more than ever, but bringing new products to market remains too slow. Hardware product teams looking to innovate quickly find traditional industrial approaches limiting and agile methodologies inadequate to hardware's unique challenges.
The TofuPilot platform redefines hardware project collaboration, centralizing and interconnecting specialized data to make it actionable, speeding up development cycles for hardware teams. Currently, in beta testing, it's gaining traction among ambitious Swiss startups and larger teams aiming for rapid innovation. The founders, CEO Julien Buteau and CCO Charlotte Evéquoz, met at senseFly and brought valuable insights from their experiences in launching complex hardware products in scaling organizations. Together with CTO Félix Berthier, their software answers the rising demand for agile and modern hardware development methodologies, fueled by the increasing complexity of technology and the expectation of shorter time-to-market across industries.
The Venture Kick funds will help TofuPilot supercharge its market entry.