UZH Life Science Fund invests in Navignostics

Navignostics secured an investment of CHF1 million in the form of a convertible loan from the UZH Life Sciences Fund (LSF). As a data-driven diagnostics company, Navignostics strives to identify the ideal treatment to battle each individual cancer patient’s disease and accelerate cancer drug development by providing key insights into drug mechanisms and tumor features for companion diagnostic development. The start-up is leveraging spatial single-cell proteomics to perform advanced analyses of tumor samples. Navignostics is a spin-off company from Bernd Bodenmiller’s lab at the University of Zurich and was founded in April 2022 by Stephane Chevrier, Andrea Jacobs, Jana Fischer and Bernd Bodenmiller.

The funding from the UZH Life Science Fund will be utilized to drive Navignostics’ company development by investing to expand a world-leading team of scientists and business professionals and boost the NX product development. “This initial funding gives Navignostics a key boost while we are in the process of putting together the seed financing round.” said Jana Fischer, Co-Founder and CEO of Navignostics.

The UZH Life Sciences Fund was established in 2016 to provide early financing to the most promising spinouts utilizing UZH intellectual property. As a partnership between the UZH foundation and the Novartis Venture Fund, the LSF aims to invest in 1-2 companies per year with up to 1M CHF.

“We are thrilled to support Navignostics,” said Michio Painter, Board Secretary of the LSF and Head of the UZH Therapy Development Accelerator. “The company has a rare combination of a team, technology, and application that together has the potential to truly push forward precision medicine. We look forward to working with Jana as the company continues to progress.”  

(Press release / SK)