Projects with Swiss start-ups receive €18.5 million Eurostars-2 funding

Since 2014, Eurostars-2 has supported a total of 791 projects worth around € 1.4 billion. The latest evaluation round of applications received 414 submissions and a total of 102 projects worth € 157 M were approved. The European Commission will invest an estimated total of € 73.2 M in the co-funded (public and private) transnational innovation projects involving 25 different countries.

With 27 projects, Switzerland qualifies among the top 3 countries involved in a Eurostars collaboration. The compilation below shows the ten projects led by Swiss startups which were established from 2011 and onwards.

Preclin Biosystems Ag
Project: Sparkle – The consortium will develop and perform the preclinical validation a therapeutic antibody against drug-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae (ARKP) infections. The therapy is based on a therapeutic monoclonal antibody (mAb) that specifically targets ARKP. Upon completion of the project, the mAb product will be ready for further clinical development.

Xsensio
Project: Xpatch –The consortium will develop an innovative wearable skin patch to track health in real time from biochemical information in sweat. Xpatch is based on the proprietary Lab-on-Skin technology. In this project, the consortium will expand the variety of sensors, implement a flexible battery and substrate, and develop an application programming interface (API) to provide valuable health data. This project will deliver a validated Xpatch, which is compatible for use with current wearables on the market.

Scantrust Sa
Project: ST/TS SC T&T – The ScanTrust & Tradeshift consortium seeks to radically improve the security & visibility of global supply chains for SMEs around the world to safely unlock and expand into new markets. By leveraging cutting-edge anti-counterfeiting technology & unit-level track & trace (T&T) audited using blockchain, they will deliver a software package to provide immutable, real-time traceability information to monitor product movement, & to ensure product authenticity and supply chain integrity

Magnes Ag
Project: Contaxense: the project aims to develop and market a novel non-invasive continuous intra-ocular pressure (IOP) monitoring device based on proprietary technology. At the successful completion of this project, a novel, electrically passive, metamaterial-based sensor embedded in a contact lens that is capable of monitoring IOP will be delivered.

Rotavis Ag
Project: T-CHAIR – the aim is to design and deliver a prototype a robot-assisted medical device product which enables a new service in novel therapies with various levels of trunk-control impairments. The use of the modular device will improve the quality of trunk control rehabilitation in an early rehabilitation stage, potentially leading to substantial cross-over effects on standing and walking.

Regenhu
Project: BioArchitect –  the team aims to deelop a novel manufacturing process that combines two key biofabrication technologies (3D Bioprinting and Melt Electrospinning). The combination of these two technologies in a single process will set a new standard for the production of in-vivo biomimic tissues for tissue engineering, drug discovery and regenerative medicine. The ouptut of this project will be an industrialized biofabrication platform which upgrades and complement regenHU's bioprinting instrument portfolio.

3brain Gmbh
Project: 3DBrainScreen – An in vitro 3D brain-on-a-chip model for advanced drug discovery and neurotoxicological assays, using evaluation of electrical activity in human-derived neuronal networks grown on nano-fiber bioscaffolds. Targeted at pharma companies, CROs and research centers, this 3D brain model will provide culture protocols, sophisticated hardware and software tools to allow parallel recordings of neuron activity in 24-wells, each with dense arrays of microelectrodes.

Gbiotech Sarl
Proejct: GeneDock – GeneDock targets a transformative biotech breakthrough by combining the first tool-kit of viral vectors that enables large DNA cargo (>100,000 bps) genome engineering, with a microfluidics system that automates the genome engineering reaction and isolates selectively modified cells. GeneDock will apply its platform to generate a desktop device that will address an important unmet medical need of efficient production of 4th and 5th generation CAR-T cell systems.

Leadxpro Ag
Project Chem2Bio – The project aim is to generate a platform for the efficient discovery of novel orphan GPCRs (oGPCRs) modulators. The proposed platform will integrate innovative approaches of structural biology, structure based drug design and virtual screening, available at LXP, in synergy with advanced functional assay and high throughput screening technologies, at Axxam.

Celonic Ag
Project: BIOFAST – the stroke project consists in (1) producing a biosimilar to recombinant plasminogen activator (biosimilar tPa) with novel bioprocessing methods under "Good Manufacturing Practices" (GMP), (2) planning and conducting a phase I clinical study to evaluate the therapeutic. Upon success of the BIOFAST project, a final phase 1 clinical report will allow us to launch phase 3 clinical trial within 6 months of project completion.

Eurostars-2
The Eurostars-2 research and development programme was developed under the EUREKA research initiative, in which Switzerland has been involved for over 30 years. Eurostars-2 is tailored towards SMEs, which invest over ten per cent of their turnover in research and development. Eurostars-2 provides SMEs with the opportunity to work on projects with the best European research teams, and to strengthen their competitiveness. While the programme is essentially open to all market fields, most projects are in the area of production technology, medical technology and digitalisation.