SUN Bioscience wins European start-up competition

Following a year of training and competition, the top 21 of the original 42 start-ups that were accepted for the prograrmme competed for cash awards and the attention of potential investors at the EIT Health Summit in the European Health Catapult finals. They were each allowed to give a brief pitch of their innovation and the jury, chosen from EIT Health's partnership, determined which ideas showed the most promise to become commercially successful and improve healthcare. The winning start-ups chosen in the category biotech are:

1st prize: SUN Bioscience (Switzerland): Their Gri3D platform allows creation of a 3D culture to produce organoids, a development that allows scientists to derive stem cells that are unique to each patient, thereby opening the door to personalised drug testing and regenerative medicine.

2nd prize: LifeTag (Portugal): Focused on Research & Development of non-invasive technologies for evaluating metabolism and improving the diagnosis of chronic metabolic diseases, such as Type-2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

3rd prize: Elthera (Switzerland): Brings together experienced pharma and biotech executives with cutting-edge academic researchers to develop proprietary, first-in-class oncology drugs using a personalized health care approach.

Winner in the category Digital Health is FibriCheck by Quompium (Belgium):  A medically certified application for the detection of irregular heart rhythms, including atrial fibrillation, only requires the user to place their finger on the camera of the smartphone to measure cardiac rhythm and share the measurments automatically with a medical professional. Winner in the category Medtech is Enmodes (Germany): provides design and engineering services to medical device companies with a major focus on validated computational analyses and optimization.

“The final in London of our first European Health Catapult together with Health Axis Europe was a great success,” said Kurt Höller, EIT Health Director Of Business Creation and head of the Accelerator pillar, which ran the programme. “The newly introduced semifinal days with additional coaching paid off completely. The quality and maturity of our 21 finalist from all over Europe was impressive. The jury had a really hard time to pick the overall winners after all these impressive pitches. Nevertheless, I’m very happy that Bieke, Sylke and Tim made it to the top. Not only were their companies providing innovative products in each category, the three CEOs were also personally convicing as truly inspiring entrepreneurs!”

The European Health Catapult is a training and competition platform, organized by EIT Health together with the Health Axis Europe (HAE), to support start-ups or young SMEs in medtech, biotech and digital health. Participating companies will have the possibility to mature their business plan, negotiation and pitching skills – and to learn from experts during a three-day training with other start-ups from all over Europe. Participants will also have a chance to win some of the €135 000 in prize money to be shared by the winning projects pitching at the December 2017 EIT Health Summit in London.

Formerly the Business Plan Aggregator, this project’s objective is to involve start-ups in the EIT Health network of world leading medtech, biotech, pharma and IT companies and world class research organizations in health care. The project is also intended to integrate start-ups in the EIT Health Investors Network, which unites international investors (venture capitalists, corporate VCs, business angels and crowd investors) in order to boost business ideas.

(SK)