Falling Walls Venture Pitches – Session 3: Health Solutions

VoxCell is a tissue engineering company based in Victoria, BC, Canada. They have developed Canada’s first high-resolution 3D bioprinter, a vascularization algorithm, and their own proprietary bioinks, which can be best described as a bioprinters cartridge.

These three innovations come together to create their vascularized cancer tissue models. VoxCell is selling two avenues of consumables, their proprietary, tissue-specific bioinks and their vascularized cancer tissue models. VoxCell’s tissue models are meant to act as a negative control that can identify which drug or therapeutic candidates will not work in clinical trials. Though their first tissue models are focused on cancer, the technology is not limited to this space: by adjusting their bioinks and cell lines Voxcell aims to assist drug developers accelerate therapeutic development across many diseases.

The mission of VoxCell is to accelerate the development of life-saving therapies, saving time and money for drug developers.

Mana.bio leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI)/ Machine Learning (ML) to design novel non-viral ex-liver cell-specific RNA delivery solutions. Mana Bio is a biotech start-up leveraging data, machine learning, and high throughput screening to design novel LNPs for extrahepatic delivery of nucleic acid therapeutics and vaccines. Mana was founded by a team of serial entrepreneurs and highly regarded experts in the field of drug delivery, machine learning, and software development.

Mana built predictive AI models and achieved novel IP-protected in vivo results, including lung-specific delivery of mRNA. The company is now open to leveraging this technology platform for collaborations with biotech and pharma companies to optimize formulations for cell-specific delivery of a wide range of payloads, including mRNA and CRISPR gRNA.

Vilje Bionics is a Norwegian Medical Technology start-up dedicated to the purpose of empowering people with wearable robotics.

Globally, 1 in 4 individuals will experience a stroke, resulting in limited arm and hand mobility for many. Vilje Bionics addresses this challenge by developing ABELarm, the world’s first commercially available motorized exoskeleton for the entire arm. The assistive device uses sensors, proprietary software, and state-of-the-art motors to register weak user-initiated movement and augment the user’s arm movement, enabling independent execution of two-handed activities.

ABELarm was initially created by a professor at NTNU to help his brother regain arm functionality after he gradually became paralyzed. This reflects their deeply ingrained user-centric approach. They are dedicated to shaping a better future for people with disabilities and revolutionizing the field of assistive technology.

Late cancer detection leads to death. Today, 50% of cancer diagnoses are late, meaning that most of these people die within 5 years. Oncoliq’s mission is to reduce cancer-caused deaths globally through an early detection approach. Their solution is a blood test that detects up to 50 cancer types. They combine molecular biology strategies based on PCR with machine learning, to develop algorithms that indicate whether a person has a tumor in a specific organ. Oncoliq’s technology is highly sensitive, non-toxic, non-invasive and low cost.

smartbax was founded in 2021 as a spin-off from the TU Munich. Its technology is based on research from the lab of Prof. Stephan Sieber and the finding of a novel hit compound with highly promising antibacterial properties, such as no detectable development of resistance, broad-spectrum activity against MRSA and the ability to eradicate biofilms. Its unique dual mode of action involves the inhibition of menaquinone biosynthesis, an essential electron carrier for energy metabolism, and stimulation of protein secretion, which leads to a dysbalance in autolysin homeostasis causing self-digest and cell lysis. This mechanism of activating an enzymatic process is unprecedented in antibiotic drug development.

smartbax further intends to expand this activation strategy to additional targets, particularly in Gram-negative bacteria, against which it is now screening for activators to demonstrate the feasibility of enzyme activation as a new paradigm in antibiotic drug development.

Founded by Mazor Robotics’ founder and surgical robotics visionary, Prof. Moshe Shoham, Tamar Robotics is developing the first endoscopic robotic system focusing on small cavity surgery. Based on innovative kinematics, the Tamar system enables highly accurate and safe robotic surgery in challenging workspaces where robotics currently cannot be used, offering improved clinical and economic benefits for millions of procedures annually worldwide.

The Tamar System is currently being developed for use in Neurosurgery where it will bring clinical and economic value in procedures such as pituitary, intraventricular, and skull-base tumor removal, as well as removal of gliomas, intracerebral hemorrhage, and other brain mass.

The system addresses about 2.3 million neurosurgical procedures annually.

Enhanc3D Genomics is a functional genomics company developing a disruptive technology capable of unlocking the 3D spatial genome for target and biomarker discovery.

The company incorporated in January 2020 and established operations at the Milner Therapeutic Institute in Cambridge, UK.

Reyedar’s mission is to democratise access to early diagnosis of life-impairing degenerative diseases. By combining state-of-the-art infra-red eye-tracking powered by Deep Learning, they create accessible medical devices for diagnosing visual impairments, neurological diseases, and cognitive disorders in just a few minutes of non-invasive testing. This unique hardware-software combination is called SONDA (Standardized Oculomotor and Neuro-ophthalmic Disorders Assessment).

SONDA allows for extremely fast, objective, and patient-friendly quantification of eye movement properties and their conversion into a novel diagnostic biomarker. Their first product, SONDA SCREENER, improves the diagnostic workflow of Glaucoma and other severe retinopathies by enabling unprecedentedly fast and simple functional vision testing inside and outside hospitals.

By 2050, antimicrobial infections are projected to cause 10 million deaths worldwide, outracing cancers. Therefore, new antimicrobial agents are urgently needed before the existing ones become ineffective.

Ynno Med developed an AI-assisted platform for discovering new drugs, specializing in the infectious disease area. They address the unmet clinical needs of new antimicrobial agents tackling antimicrobial resistance. As a university spin-off company, YnnoMed is commercializing the scientific and technological findings obtained from research activities to utilize the otherwise unexploited knowledge. As a drug R&D company, their goal is to design, develop, and distribute first-in-class antimicrobial medicines that can treat current antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections and suppress the generation of new antimicrobial resistance. Additionally, they can also provide drug design and discovery services, using their technology to facilitate industrial development.

Visual analysis is a key bottleneck in precision medicine. Aignostics believes that AI holds the key to discover the next generation of tissue-based biomarkers to drastically improve how cancer and other complex diseases are diagnosed and treated. Their mission is to support the discovery and validation of these biomarkers, and to develop them into diagnostic products for global use in clinics and labs.

B cells have a significant role in the positive immune response affecting the outcome of cancer. Tabby Therapeutics is developing first-in-class novel engineered B cells (EBC) for tumor immunotherapy.

By introducing engineered B cell receptors (BCR) directed against tumor specific targets, they can exert multiple anti-tumor effects leveraging B cell unique capabilities to orchestrate humoral, cellular, adaptive and innate immune responses. Tabby’s EBCs offer a novel living and evolving tuned-medicine for the treatment of solid tumors.