CompagOs to advance personalised medicine for bone cancer

Bone metastases, which affect up to half of cancer patients, often lead to skeletal-related events, including fractures, impacting the quality of life and survival rates. Disease management is challenging for clinicians due to neglecting genetic variability among patients and lacking targeted drug therapy for bone metastases. Over several decades, Osteosarcoma, the most prevalent bone cancer in children and adults, has seen minimal progress in drug therapy. The current one-size-fits-all approach overlooks the diverse drug responses in the patient population and cannot be replicated with traditional animal models, slowing down the clinical translation of new therapies.

Zurich-based startup CompagOs seeks to revolutionise cancer in bone treatment by offering patient-centred services that assess drug effectiveness using exclusive human bone disease models in a reliable, cost-effective, and safe in vitro environment. By developing a database of personalised drug responses based on organoid disease models, CompagOs will provide oncologists with patient reports to assist in selecting the most effective treatment for everyone. Furthermore, their technology platform will facilitate the clinical translation of research findings and drug development using human bone disease models.

With approximately 5.4M cancer patients worldwide suffering from bone metastases and 26,000 new cases of osteosarcoma cases diagnosed each year, this technology has the potential to significantly enhance treatment outcomes, extend life, improve quality of life, and alleviate the financial burden on healthcare systems caused by ineffective treatments. Furthermore, using human-like bone models, this approach also overcomes the limitations of traditional animal and 2D culture models.

The Venture Kick funds will be used to advance the current bone model prototype towards patient-specific cancer in bone models through collaboration with hospitals. Hence, the provided kick will boost the market entry of CompagOs with a research-use-only product to serve clinical researchers and pharma/biotech active in cancer and to complete the proof-of-concept to initiate clinical trials.

CompagOs’ team consists of Gian Nutal Schädli, with a PhD in Bone Tissue Engineering and Imaging from ETH; Robert, Baumann, MSc. ETH in Mech Eng; Barna Gal, MD in Orthopedics; and Chris Steffi, PhD in Molecular Biology and Tissue Engineering from the National University of Singapore. Their collective expertise will enable CompagOs to leverage personalised and targeted strategies that match patients with the most suitable drug treatments, ensuring optimal therapy delivery for everyone. For the incorporation as an AG, the startup has strengthened its team with Ralph Müller, Full Professor of Biomechanics at ETH and Anil Sethi, Entrepreneur in Residence at ETH.

“Venture Kick gave us an invaluable boost to get our idea out of the lab and forced us to find and talk to the right people. Especially the business trips to the US were invaluable for our progress as they allowed us to connect internationally with like-minded people and potential early adopters, validating our go-to-market strategy,” said Gian Nutal Schädli, Co-founder of CompagOs.

(Press release)