Alien’s Investor Day – Health

Thursday 8th September 2022 - online

10:00 AM - 13:00 PM CET 

Alien Technology Transfer inaugurates the Alien Investor Days, a series of events dedicated to connecting our network of selected companies with investors, with each appointment to be devoted to a specific industry. 

During this first edition focused on Health, investors will have the opportunity to hear the pitches of 12 selected top-class healthcare companies that have been recently awarded a € 2.5 M non dilutive grant from the European Commission (through the EIC Accelerator funding scheme) and are looking to raise further funding, between € 2 - 15 M.

During the e-pitching event, the following startups and innovators will present their innovative business cases.

Nanovation, Israel

NanoVation is an Israeli SME, founded in 2014, which develops and integrates nanomaterial-based sensors for medical applications and general purposes and is run by an experienced and multi-disciplinary team of 12 people.
NanoVation is about to finalise the development of the SenseGuard device and validate its efficacy and safety in dedicated clinical studies. SenseGuard is a reliable solution for monitoring of patients with respiratory diseases, including COPD, based on a unique nanosensor-based technology. It is an innovative wireless wearable device that enables continuous and non-invasive monitoring of lung functions derived from patients' tidal (normal) breathing.

Lightspace Technologies, Latvia

Argumented reality (AR) is set to revolutionize the healthcare sector, especially for medical imaging technology for application in surgeries, radiologic diagnostics and medical practice. However, the challenge is to derive a practical near-eye display for AR glasses. 
NGEAR is a state-of-the-art multi-focal accommodating AR headset that eliminates all adverse effects of existing headsets and outputs holographic look 3D images. It completely solves current pains of near-work application with VA conflict for true application of AR in the healthcare sector. It is ideal for healthcare professionals who require 3D glasses for near eye imaging and can be safely used for long hours without discomfort to eyes and mind. The core technology of NGEAR3D is the proprietary liquid-crystal optical switcher elements, that can be electronically switched between transparent and optically diffusive state in <500 microseconds. This static volumetric technology provides real 3D volumetric holographic imagery, thus matching it perfectly to the real world. NGEAR3D will be a disrupting link for the image guided surgery to really take-off and benefit patients and medical patient & medical personnel.

HilApplied, Israel

Cancer is a global problem with 14.1 million new cases occurring annually and an expected increase of 68% by 2030. Ensuring effective and safe treatment remains a significant challenge for healthcare organisations. Studies have shown Proton Therapy (PT) to be effective in treating many types of tumours as well as cancers that cannot be removed completely by surgery. PT is routinely used for cancer treatment, however it is limited by the sheer size and expense of the systems. There are currently only 102 operational PT facilities in the world, addressing less than 5% of clinical demand. HIL has developed an ultra-compact, high-performance system for Proton Therapy. HIL’s advanced particle accelerator and beamline technologies make PT widely accessible by offering highly cost-effective single-room solutions. HILApplied intends to develop and manufacture its pre-Beta system in Israel's first PT centre. In addition, the development of the Beta version of the system will be carried out, which will enable the company to launch its first sales and undertake additional crucial commercial activities, preparing the company for widespread market penetration.

EBAMed, Switzerland

Heart arrhythmia is a major worldwide public health problem, accounting for 15–20% of all deaths. Catheter ablation is the current gold standard for heart arrhythmia treatment. This invasive procedure requires patient hospitalization, a staff of 10 doctors, and has a high risk of complications, such as bleeding, infection and damage to heart valves and blood vessels.
EBAMed developed Cardio-kit, a non-invasive medical device for heart arrhythmia treatment using proton therapy. Cardio-kit is a plug & play system that can be integrated into any existing proton therapy machine. Cardio-kit enables monitoring of heart movements in real-time, and automatically adjust the Stop/Go signal to the proton therapy machine based on the cardiac cycle in which to intervene. Cardio-kit ensures an accurate, effective and safe treatment of the moving target within the heart at the right time. In this way, Cardio-kit facilitates an out-patient procedure, as it does not require any hospitalization or sedation. The procedure is quick, safe, painless and suitable for any age and health condition patient with no side-effects.

Innoventric, Israel

Tricuspid regurgitation (TR) is a cardiac disorder in which the tricuspid valve leaks during systole causing blood backflow, resulting in decreased cardiac output. TR is the most common valvular heart disease affecting 65%-85% of the global population in its mild form. However, mild TR can progress to severe TR, leading to heart failure or death if left untreated. Today, the only option for treatment is valve repair or replacement through open-heart surgery, which is associated with high mortality rates, risks, and costs. Over 3M patients suffer from TR in Europe, and for the majority, their condition is too severe for surgery; therefore, there is no effective treatment. Innoventric has developed the Trillium™ - a transcatheter tricuspid valve replacement solution: the whole procedure is minimally invasive and can be completed in 30mins.

ZygoFix, Israel

Over 1M spinal fusion procedures performed annually worldwide. Current spinal fusion procedures are highly invasive: they are based on building “screw-bridges”, connected by metal rods stabilizing motion between vertebrae. There are no effective treatments in the market that substitute the current invasive implants. zLOCK is a small implant that resolves spinal fusion by eliminating the need for screws and rods. zLOCK minimizes the invasiveness of procedures through a percutaneous approach, where only a small skin incision is required for implant placement, making it suitable for outpatient procedures. zLOCK can revolutionize spinal fusion standard clinical practice and the market. The implant value propositions have been confirmed in a first in human trial. 

VesselSens, Germany

VesselSens has developed an implantable sensor system for wireless restenosis detection. Globally >237 million people suffer from peripheral artery disease (PAD), an abnormal narrowing of the arteries. The main cause of PAD is atherosclerosis, the pathological storage of fats in the inner wall layer of arterial vessels. The implantation of stents (tubular spiral wire protheses) is the first-line therapy for PAD with ~3.5M stents implanted every year. Critically, restenosis - the gradual reclogging of the blood vessel after stent implantation - is a major problem even with modern stents leading to limb amputation (due to critical limb ischemia) and death. Restenosis occurs ~6 years after implantation in up to 23% of all cases and is often detected when it is too late owing to costly and infrequent monitoring of stent implants and low patient compliance. The high cost of diagnostic imaging (>€50M /p.a in western Europe, 2020) and the need for specialised medical personnel hinders frequent monitoring. This is a significant clinical challenge because PAD patients are at high risk of disease progression.

EzMems, Israel

Today's demanding medical treatment, pharmaceutical production and distribution operations require careful control of patients and process conditions. This includes tasks like accurate feedback of the respiratory status of the patient, detecting occlusion during infusions, process monitoring during cell culture, purification, or drug product formulation etc. The key enabling technology to digitize such tasks is to have cost efficient multi-sensing capabilities at the most critical edge point of the process. The currently used medical/pharma systems lack sensing capabilities as sensors are expensive to integrate, generally sense only one physical parameter, are bulky, needing electrical power source, and cannot provide wireless power transmission and multisensing at the edge. Multi-sensing at the edge offers new opportunities to develop intelligent monitoring network in hospitals and pharma manufacturing to provide fast and accurate responses saving costs also lowering the environmental footprint at the time of sensors manufacturing.

Ligence, Lithuania

Heart ultrasound is the most versatile, most widely used, and cost-effective heart imaging method. Accessibility to ultrasound imaging is growing rapidly as the devices are getting cheaper and smaller. However, interpretation of the acquired images creates a bottleneck; it requires substantial skill, it is long, manual, and prone to errors and variability. Ligence is remodelling the quality, difficulty, and length of echocardiography with an AI driven tool to automate the whole analysis of heart ultrasound images. Deep learning neural networks classify heart image views, detect heart cycle phases, and perform measurements. It seamlessly integrates with existing infrastructure in hospitals, meaning that moments after images are loaded onto the hospital's network the results are accessible on any workstation. This results in dramatically increased accessibility and analysis quality, earlier diagnosis, and better patient risk strati cation, monitoring, and patient management.

Yonalink, Israel

YonaLink (YL) is an Israeli company established in 2018 with the mission to disrupt the €46B clinical research market by connecting the world of Prospective Clinical Trial Data. To this end, YL is developing the YL System, a platform to migrate clinical research data saved in the patient health records, from medical centres to research database(s) in an automated, secure, validated, trusted and error-free way. The company has secured over €1.8M in the development of the YL System, reaching TRL 7 with pilot trials implementing it at Soroka MC (Clalit Health Insurance leading hospital) and in Sheba MC. The trials have confirmed the accuracy in migrating patients’ de-identified data from the EHR to the trial DB. 

Thericon, Germany 

Surgeons often have trouble distinguishing different types of tissue in endoscopic surgeries due to limited visual contrast and lack of tactile feedback. Thericon is the first to bring multiparametric imaging to the operating theater. This allows for displaying of previously invisible tissue properties together with standard color images on a single screen. The wealth of this diagnostic information and its intuitive presentation allows for faster and more accurate surgery results. Current imaging solutions face the following challenges: specialization, accurancy, contrast and scan time. Current systems are highly specialized, usually providing just one additional visualization technique each. Current systems have false negative rates of up to 20%. Current solutions cannot image multiple contrast agents simultaneously, forcing surgeons to select only one before operation begins. Increasing accuracy leads to increased scan time, delaying decision making by surgeons.

Filterlex, Israel

Aortic stenosis is the most common and most severe heart valve disease, affecting 20M people worldwide. The most common treatment is valve replacement through Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI). The procedure is very risky, since embolic debris are released to the blood stream and may cause ischemic brain lesions, major disabling strokes and kidney dysfunction. Current Embolic Protection Devices (EPDs) can only provide partial cerebral protection, they interfere with the TAVI delivery system, and require secondary artery access to the TAVI system. Filterlex developed the CAPTIS® system, an innovative intra-aortic EPD for deflecting, capturing and removing embolic particles during TAVI. This revolutionary EPD provides full-body protection by ensuring the best performance in capturing and safely removing the embolic debris. Key objectives of the project are to perform a multi-site study and obtain CE Mark, upscale manufacturing and perform a post surveillance market study.

Detailed Agenda

For any information or registratios to this event, please contact communications@alientt.com