ARTIDIS Raises CHF 8.8 Million in Seed Financing

The funding will be used to advance the company's healthtech platform into a large multi-centre clinical study together with the University Hospital Tuebingen (Germany), University Hospital Barcelona (Spain), and Texas Medical Center (Houston, US). The study aims to further validate the value of ARTIDIS in diagnosing breast and lung cancer, as well as for personalizing and optimizing cancer treatment. The results will support the regulatory submissions to the FDA and the European Notified Body to gain approval for the ARTIDIS medical device and data platform. This is one of the major prerequisites for ARTIDIS to enter the diagnostic market world-wide in 2021 in order to improve the standard of care for cancer patients.

Marija Plodinec, CEO of ARTIDIS commented: "The closure of this financing round and the successful recruitment of 545 patients in our first clinical study at the University Hospital Basel this year is a huge success. We are thankful for the support and trust of all our shareholders – together, we are opening a new chapter towards personalizing the patient journey."

The round was supported by family offices and private individuals from Switzerland and the EU, including BERNINA Bioinvest and SMD MedicalTrade AG.

The management of BERNINA BioInvest commented: "ARTIDIS brings the future of cancer diagnostics and treatment to the patients and clinicians. We support ARTIDIS because their approach will significantly optimize the diagnostics workflow and has the potential to revolutionize the way treatment decision-making is done, improving not only the personal patient journey but benefiting the whole healthcare ecosystem. We are confident that Marija Plodinec and her team have the expertise, the passion, and the drive needed to realize this vision."

Martin Gertsch, Chairman of the Board says: "We are very glad that we could also strengthen our Board of Directors during this year: Owing to their significant industry experience and diverse subject matter expertise, Ms Trudi Haemmerli, Board Member Innosuisse, and Dr. Reinhard Ambros, former Global Head of Novartis Venture Fund, were both elected as Board of Directors this year."

ARTIDIS has developed a nanomechanical sensor for cancer diagnosis and treatment optimization. It captures the physical properties of tissue enabling the clinician to differentiate between benign and malignant tissue in under three hours. In addition, the technology allows the clinician to define the aggressiveness of the tumor with very high accuracy based on the nanomechanical signature of the cells. Only very soft cells can squeeze through all different tissues to create distant metastases that are responsible for more than 90% of cancer related deaths. The nano-probe measures the tissue’s physical properties allowing us to discover robust nano-mechanical biomarkers and predict disease development. Moreover, ARTIDIS technology is not limited to cancer and can analyze any living tissue.