CHF 5.1 million for blood purification startup hemotune

Despite the corona crisis, hemotune managed to build a very strong consortium led by OCCIDENT with participation of the Korean medical device company Greencross Medical Science Corp. (GCMS), and Zürcher Kantonalbank. The closing was finalized shortly after EIT Health announced co-investing EUR 500,000 in hemotune in July 2020. This brings the total amount raised since incorporation to more than CHF 10 million.

With the Series A hemotune will accelerate the preclinical development of HemoSystem. HemoSystem allows therapeutic blood purification with much higher efficiency and precision compared to existing methods by mixing nanoengineered magnetic beads directly with patients’ blood in a dialysis-like machine. The beads are 300 times smaller than a red blood cell and are equipped with selective binding agents against disease related compounds. While the blood flows through a magnetic filter, beads and bound targets are highly efficiently removed before it is recirculated to the patients’ body. The aim of the treatment is to remove a mixture of different substances playing key roles in immune response and sepsis.

Cédric Barra, Investment Manager for the life sciences sector at OCCIDENT comments: “We are very excited to welcome hemotune to our portfolio. hemotune is a company whose development we have been following for a long time and which has made tremendous progress in the last years in developing their highly innovative platform technology. We consider the first indication of septic shock to be very promising and see additional fields of application that can be addressed in the future. One aspect we also closely follow is the probable role of septic shock in connection with COVID-19 - also here the company could have a major impact.”

Support for the expansion to Asia
Eun-Uk Ahn, CEO of GCMS says: “We decided to invest in hemotune to strengthen our collaboration. While hemotune plans to develop innovative blood purification technology and launch in Europe as the first market, GCMS would like to help hemotune to launch its products in Asia. As GCMS has already established a market in Asia and all the other regions, GCMS can become a strong partner to penetrate the market within short time. The immediate market success will be generated faster than we all assume when we can find the right treatment solutions against COVID-19. With its much potentials, GCMS has huge hopes on hemotune. Green Cross Medical Science Corp., a subsidiary of GC which is a leading company in the Korean Pharma and Biotechnology Industry, is one of the first-generation service providers of in vitro diagnosis.

Daniel Schoch, Head of Start-up Finance at Zürcher Kantonalbank: “So far, there are hardly any effective treatment methods for sepsis. Hemotune is developing an innovative solution to change exactly this. Due to the high medical benefit, we are supporting the young company with start-up financing from Zürcher Kantonalbank.”