ETH Spinoff, MaxWell Biosystems aspires to help players in the pharmaceutical industry to run functional drug screenings targeting the brain at a higher throughput. The company has now secured CHF 4 million in a Series A round with Sensirion Holding AG, existing shareholders and business angels.
MaxWell Biosystems AG, founded in 2016, provides high-content electrophysiology platforms that advance scientific discovery and accelerate drug discovery for neurodegenerative diseases. Its first product, MaxOne, is a high-density microelectrode (HD-MEA) system with thousands of tiny electrodes simultaneously sensing the small electrical signals of neuronal cells. Targeted at academic and research laboratories, the technology allows for investigating the activity of cells in vitro at network-, cellular, and subcellular levels. The launch of MaxTwo, a multiwell HD-MEA platform, increases the throughput of performing cell-based assays to 6- and 24-well plates catering to pharmaceutical and biotech companies, as well as contract research organisations.
Moving towards the growth phase, the company has obtained fresh capital following the closing of its series A round. Sensirion Holding AG, the leading manufacturer of digital microsensors and systems, existing Shareholders and business angels contributed to the round. The funds will enable the startup to further industrialise and scale-up the production of their HD-MEA plates.
Maxwell and Sensirion strengthen their partnership
Sensirion and MaxWell Biosystems have a long shared history, dating back to their origin at the Physical Electronics Laboratory, and the BioEngineering Laboratory of ETH Zürich. Building on their history, and with this financing round, MaxWell Biosystems and Sensirion now increase their collaborative efforts and envision a long-term partnership. Sensirion’s deep expertise in packaging and encapsulating microsensors for high volume production adds tremendous value to this partnership. It will be an enabling step for MaxWell Biosystems’ goal of scaling up their multiwell HD-MEA plate production to address their customers’ need.
Furthermore, Maxwell has welcomed Matthias Streiff, Sensor Innovation at Sensirion, as a new board member. He comments: “I’m very excited to be able to support MaxWell Biosystems in their journey to enable high-throughput functional drug screening. We are convinced that through Sensirion’s Board membership, we can contribute to accelerating the scale-up of MaxWell Biosystems’ production capabilities and provide significant commercial insight through our strategic leadership. We see this next step as a natural continuation of our long-term partnership.”
(Press release/RAN)
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