Dear Entrepreneur,

As a valued member of our life sciences innovation community, we want to celebrate our five years anniversary with you by sharing some of the success stories of this past year and by inviting you to connect and participate in our exciting, upcoming events.

Over the past five years, Geneus has supported the initiation of over 100 life sciences innovations, involving more than 300 highly qualified people. Our alumni have founded 19 companies. These include success stories that are now supported by our founding partners EPFL Innovation Park and Fongit, such as Terapet, EBAMed, Imverse, and Fluosphera. We believe this track record demonstrates the power of coupling an initiator program with top incubators to support the shaping of research into promising startups. 

So what’s next? BioAlps recently interviewed us about the growth of the life sciences innovation in our region – the opportunities, challenges, and the road ahead. You can find the article here, which shares our perspectives.

The best way to predict the future is to build it. And we look forward to building it together.

Enjoy your read!
The Geneus Team

What does a year of innovation look like?

Here is a glimpse of our innovators and supporters in action over the past year.

The purpose of Terapet is to develop and commercialize innovative solutions for a safer, more precise and time-saving proton therapy for cancer treatment.  Terapet were awarded CHF 1’530’000 in non-dilutive funds this year after collaborating with world-class R&D partners CERN, Karolinska Institute, and Skandion Clinic. Find out more about their new partnership here.

A Vibrant Life Sciences Community

Campus Biotech Innovation Park now hosts 23 startups, 7 foundations, 3 VCs, 13 support organisations, as well as UNIGE, EPFL Extension School and the Geneva Tsinghua Initiative –in the SDGs Solution Space.

CBIP startups are thriving:

ABCDx has been granted EUR 2.4M by Eurostars Funding Programme for the development of their rapid test for acute stroke brain biomarkers, which can be used in the ambulance. Faster stroke diagnosis, as well as time to treat, will increase patient survival rate and improve outcomes.
ABCDx will work with Precision Biosensor, an innovative point-of-care test manufacturer and Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital in South Korea. Read more

Artiria Medical aims to prevent arterial constriction following hemorrhagic stroke. The early-stage medical device company recently joined forces with the Wyss Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing state-of-the-art therapies to the patient. More information can be found here.

Earlysight is developing a medical device to help doctors detect and treat eye diseases at an early-stage by using precise retinal imaging. This summer,  the startup secured CHF 2.3 million led by Verve Ventures to support its growth journey leading to market entry. EarlySight has received support from VentureKick, FIT “Fondation pour l’innovation technologique”, and was one of the EIT Health Headstart awardees. Read more

MaxiVAX is a clinical stage (Phase II) biotech company dedicated to the cure of cancer by immunotherapy.  In collaboration with a research team from the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG) and the University of Geneva (UNIGE), they developed an innovative technology called “cell encapsulation.” COVID-19 pandemic has motivated the scientists to broaden the scope of their technology, which was  was developed to stimulate immunity to fight cancer, to test its effectiveness against viruses. Read more

iOnctura is a clinical-stage oncology company targeting core resistance and relapse mechanisms at the tumor-stroma-immune interface. They recently won the support of Innosuisse in a 2-year innovation project. The Innosuisse grant of CHF 600k will fund fifty percent of the project’s costs, covering the research carried out by Professor Francesco Bertoni of the Institute of Oncology Research (IOR) in Bellinzona, Switzerland. Find out about the first volunteer here

Key events coming up!

Bring your innovation to life!