The EIC Tech to Market Venture Building Programme is organising a Ventures’ Ignition Day on Health and Medical technologies. The event, that will take place online on 7 November, from 10h30 to 12h00 CET, will gather 7 promising EIC beneficiaries that have made significant progress on their technologies and business development in the Healthcare and MedTech fields during the Programme. Now they are looking for investment opportunities to continue developing their technologies and contribute to positioning Europe as a leader in health and medical industries.
If you’re interested in participating as an investor, please apply here until 6 November!
During the session, these 7 EIC-funded projects will pitch for 5 minutes each, and receive questions from a panel of invited jury members. Furthermore, the investors in the audience will have the opportunity to ask questions via chat during the session and to request one-to-one meetings with any of the pitching innovators after the event.
Covering areas like heart failure, cancer therapeutics (with focus on lung cancer and prostate cancer diagnosis), hearing care and magnetic resonance imaging, and after benefiting of venture building services, these innovators are now aiming at meeting and networking with investors to advance on their fundraising journey.
This is an excellent opportunity to explore innovative investment prospects in the health and medical technologies sectors and connect with talented entrepreneurs that have successfully participated in the EIC Tech to Market Venture Building Programme.
Meet the cutting-edge solutions, all coming from EIC Transition projects, that will be pitching on 7 November:
Novel drug-discovery platform to target cancer stem cells
Hundreds of thousands of people are diagnosed each year with colorectal cancer (CRC). Despite available treatments, the survival of patients with advanced-stage CRC is poor. The EU-funded ACHILLEUS project aims to develop and validate a novel drug discovery platform that involves patient-derived organoids (PDOs) and phenotypic machine learning-assisted validation to identify therapeutics to target CRC stem cell signalling pathways. Researchers will target CRC stem cell signalling pathways to shift the balance between stem cells and differentiated cells, using the targeting of the Wnt pathway as a proof of principle. The goal is to create a new company based on a phenotypic drug discovery platform for targeting cancer stem cell signalling.
Innovative technologies for hearing loss diagnosis and treatment
Cochlear Synaptopathy (CS) is the first sign of permanent hearing damage, caused by ageing, excessive exposure to noise or ototoxicity. It affects predominantly communication in background noise and despite its huge prevalence among hearing impaired people, there is currently neither clinical diagnosis nor treatment available. The EU-funded EarDiTech project will further develop the CochSyn test, a differential test based on auditory EEG signals, for the precision diagnosis of CS. At the same time, the project will optimize the CoNNear algorithms for the use in hearing devices, which, based on the outcomes of the CochSyn test, can individually compensate for CS. In addition, clinical trials will provide evidence of the patient benefit and the applicability in a real-world clinical context.
Anticipating complications for improved management of heart failure
Transportation systemic risks are not well understood across modes, regions, and critical interdependent sectors, creating uncertainty about risks resulting from a major system disruption. There is a lack of resilience schemes, especially for the long term, integrated into transport infrastructure due to the inability to monetize resilience for investment decisions, and there are also strong barriers to its implementation to operating practice. The overall objective of FORESEE is to develop and demonstrate a reliable and easily implementable toolkit for providing short- and long-term resilience schemes against traffic disruption due to flooding, landslide and structural damage for rail and road corridors and multimodal terminals. It will help move towards a performance-based risk assessment framework
A portable breakthrough for magnetic resonance imaging
In the realm of medical diagnostics, the role of mobile imaging devices is crucial. However, the portability of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a pivotal tool for neurological and musculoskeletal conditions, has remained a significant challenge. While recent strides have been made with low-field MRI devices, their weight and dimensions still limit their utility in demanding scenarios such as remote regions, sports events and home healthcare. In this context, the EIC-funded NextMRI project will address these constraints to make MRI widely accessible, revolutionising the landscape of diagnostic imaging. Objectives include expanding technology for extremity and brain imaging, enhancing diagnostics with machine learning, improving portability and ensuring cost-effectiveness.
Attenuated bacteria for the treatment of lung cancer
Harnessing the power of the immune system to fight cancer is a very attractive strategy and many approaches have been developed in this endeavour. Funded by the European Innovation Council, the PB_LC project capitalises on the development of attenuated lung bacteria as a means of stimulating T cell infiltration in the tumour. These bacteria are engineered to secrete cytokines locally in the tumour for further immune stimulation. The PB_LC project will establish manufacturing and formulation processes alongside an inhalation delivery approach for the product. Researchers will evaluate the safety, pharmacokinetics and efficacy of this live biotherapeutic towards clinical use in patients with non-small cell lung carcinomas.
Modern ultrasound imaging for comprehensive prostate cancer diagnostics
Currently, the prostate cancer (PC) diagnostic requires multiple invasive and painful biopsy procedures with a significant risk of adverse health events. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) represents an additional PC diagnostic tool but its accessibility to patients is poor. Angiogenesis Analytics in the Netherlands has developed a novel PC imaging diagnostic method based on modern ultrasound imaging technology and innovative signal processing algorithms. The developed solution is less expensive than MRI, does not require the training of specialised radiologists, and will be accessible to patients, thereby improving PC management and reducing healthcare costs. The EU-funded PCAVISION project will complete, validate, and certify the solution, enabling its delivery to 16 EU clinics for long-term demonstration and testing.
Antisense oligonucleotide technology in the treatment of lung adenocarcinoma
Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) is an aggressive form of lung cancer with a poor prognosis that represents 1/3 of all lung cancer cases and currently lacks the targeted therapies for treatment. The vast majority of LUAD tumours have a Numb protein isoform, as result of the alternative splicing, that drives cancer cell proliferation and correlates with a worse disease prognosis. Previously developed proprietary antisense oligonucleotides (AONs) were able to correct pathological splicing and inhibit cancer cell proliferation and tumour growth in several mouse models. The EU-funded TAONas-LUAD project will prepare AONs technology for clinical trial validation and will develop a business plan for commercialisation.
Are you eager to know more about these disruptive technologies? Don't miss this opportunity and apply here until 6 November!
Check out our brochure with more information here.
About the EIC Tech to Market (T2M) Venture Building Programme
The EIC Tech to Market Venture Building Programme aims to help build start-ups to exploit promising research results through venture building services, comprising a range of activities from identification of promising business ideas to venture creation and development.
If you’re interested in knowing more about the Programme and our open calls, please visit our page in the EIC Community.
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DISCLAIMER: This information is provided in the interest of knowledge sharing and should not be interpreted as the official view of the European Commission, or any other organisation.