Testmate Health and Atinary Technologies get Biopôle funding

Novel self-testing for sexually transmitted diseases

Testmate Health is the first new recipient of Biopôle Start-up Fund. Led by Siew-Veena Sahi, the startup recently closed its seed round, and by having the additional Biopôle support, it is able to be even more efficient with the funds raised to date, and enable the team to achieve more milestones prior to raising their next round. The CEO and co-founder explains: “We will be using the 90k funds towards the lab & office infrastructure, hiring of commercial & regulatory consultants, and towards equipment to begin small batch production of our test kits in-house.” 

Testmate is developing a rapid urine self-test for the four common sexually transmitted diseases, that provide results at home directly in minutes without having to send samples to a lab for processing or waiting days for a result. The test is digitally enabled, so the user is able to be directly connected to a healthcare professional for a consultation & prescription - if needed. 

Testmate is currently finalizing its prototype, which it will then manufacture in a small batch and enter into pre-clinical studies that will be conducted at the Hopitaux Universitaires de Genève. Simultaneously, the team is working on the go to market strategy as COVID has dramatically changed the landscape for self-tests today. The startup aims to open its Series A at the beginning of 2023. 

Deeptech to accelerate R&D and material innovation

Atinary Tehnologies is the second new recipient of the Biopôle Startup Fund. Co-founder and CTO Loic Roch says the the generous financial support provided by the Biopole startup fund allowed his startup to launch a new vertical and provide solutions that go beyond AI and software. Further adding: “We built a 3D-printed Self-Driving Lab™ prototype to demonstrate and keep our technology at the forefront. This testing lab is a first step towards accelerating the discovery of next generation materials for batteries.”

Atinary Technologies is a deeptech startup based in Silicon Valley and on Biopôle campus. The team develops market-leading machine learning (ML) algorithms and technology tools to accelerate R&D and innovation of advanced materials. These materials are key across industries for the transition to a sustainable future. Their goal is to accelerate R&D by orders of magnitude by putting ML at the heart of the innovation process, and replace the slow and expensive trial-and-error approach. Atinary SDLabs, their cloud-based platform, facilitates deployment of ML tools to optimize and accelerate innovation in labs.

Atinary is fundraising to scale its team and operations, grow its user base, and deploy its products and technology at scale with strategic partners and clients. The deeptech startup plans to continue developing its cutting-edge SDLabs Platform and to scale its prototype materials discovery Self-Driving Lab™ to accelerate the urgent transition to a sustainable future.

Six startups supported already

To date, Biopôle Start-up Fund supporting already 6 impact-driven life sciences startups. The recipients are Testmate Health, Atinary Technologies, Adaptyv Biosystems, Alithea Genomics, Novostia and Genknowme. Companies interested in applying for the Biopôle Start-up Fund can find all the information they need here.

(ES)