With the mission to improve tuberculosis diagnosis, Avelo developed a breath collector that allows doctors to painlessly collect a patient’s breath sample and analyse it with existing PCR tests for fast and accurate diagnosis. The fresh capital will allow the startup to accelerate the clinical validation of its device.
The seed financing round was led by OCCIDENT, with participation from Privilège Ventures, Arve Capital, Zürcher Kantonalbank and several MedTech angel investors. “We are very happy about our investor consortium. They not only bring in financial resources but also, and more importantly, long-standing industry experience. Their business networks and scale-up expertise will accelerate our journey to make AveloCollect available for better diagnosis of respiratory infections and ultimately to save lives,” said Melanie Aregger, CEO & Co-founder of Avelo. The proceeds from the round will flow into product development, clinical validation studies and business development activities for a successful market entry.
Today, diagnosing Tuberculosis and lower respiratory tract infections causing pneumonia, the 4th leading cause of death worldwide, is neither easy nor reliable. Avelo makes every breath count with its breath collector. Doctors use it to painlessly collect a patient’s breath sample from the respiratory tract and analyze it with existing PCR tests for a fast and accurate diagnosis. With the results, they can take proper action like selecting the right treatment or referring severe cases to the hospital. This improves patient outcomes and saves healthcare costs. It may also help to reduce the more than 65% of antibiotics unnecessarily prescribed in primary care. Avelo invented its breath collector with broad utility in mind, comparable to other sample collection technologies such as blood tubes.
“Our innovation is a novel breath sampling technology that contains a functional nanofiber filter. This filter combines the collection of human breath aerosols that contain infectious pathogens from the respiratory tract with a quick and efficient release of these pathogens for subsequent detection. It is compatible with a variety of molecular tests and laboratory workflows, is affordable and scalable, and enables breath biobanking for the first time”, says Tobias Broger, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of Avelo.
Cédric Barra, Senior Investment Manager for the life sciences sector at OCCIDENT, commented on the exciting potential impact Avelo brings to diagnosing respiratory infections. "We are very excited to welcome Avelo to our portfolio. The combination of a non-invasive sampling method and the existing lab infrastructure provides a lot of potential and serves the needs of the patients and the industry perfectly," he added.
"Companies succeed because of the right team and product: Avelo has them both. We are thrilled to be part of this round and to be able to contribute to the development of Avelo in the years to come," said Jacqueline Ruedin Rüsch, Founding General Partner of Privilège Ventures.
(Press release)
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