MinWave Technologies, NexMR, OVOMIND, Rhovica Neuroimaging, School Rebound, and SenSiC win Venture Kick’s first stage of financial and entrepreneurial support.
Their projects offer microwave passive devices 10 times smaller and 10 times lighter, aim to facilitate the study of challenging systems and assist biotechs in their journey to address unmet medical needs, compute biosignals from wearable devices and delivers real-time emotional data for interaction in videogames, enable a safe and fast external ventricular drain insertion that prevents devastating complications, help children improve their handwriting, and use a novel material, Silicon Carbide (SiC), and two novel technologies to fabricate and commercialize new beam monitors.
EXTRACT
MinWave Technologies, NexMR, OVOMIND, Rhovica Neuroimaging, School Rebound, and SenSiC win Venture Kick’s first stage of financial and entrepreneurial support. Their projects offer microwave passive devices 10 times smaller and 10 times lighter, aim to facilitate the study of challenging systems and assist biotechs in their journey to address unmet medical needs, compute biosignals from wearable devices and delivers real-time emotional data for interaction in videogames, enable a safe and fast external ventricular drain insertion that prevents devastating complications, help children improve their handwriting, and use a novel material, Silicon Carbide (SiC), and two novel technologies to fabricate and commercialize new beam monitors.
MinWave Technologies: Microwave passive devices 10x smaller, 10x lighter
Passive RF devices are parts of communication systems that lie in between the antenna and the electronics part. They exist in any communication system, such as satellite communication systems and 5g and 6g infrastructure. Given the recent demand increase in communication quality and coverage and emerging trends such as commercialized space and 5g, there is a need for more potent and cost-effective infrastructure. However, due to technical barriers, so far, the passive RF section remained bulky and massive, which increases the manufacturing and commissioning costs of communication infrastructures such as satellites. As an example in a GEO satellite, the RF payload consists of 100s to 1000s of filters that weights 10s of Kgs while the mission cost is 100s of thousands of dollars per Kg. Existing size reduction technologies come at a huge cost of energy efficiency which simply makes them unusable or costly to use in many applications.
MinWave core competency is an innovative design framework for at least 10 times smaller and lighter micro/millimeter-wave all metallic waveguide devices and fabrication of these components using additive manufacturing methods. MinWave solution can reduce the communication payload weight of a satellite by 90% while reducing the manufacturing cost. The market potential for MinWave products is estimated above 3.3 B$ which grows at a rate of 7% annually. Co-founders are CTO Dr. Khatibi, inventor of the technique, CEO Dr. Mostafa Khosrownejad, an EPFL mechanical engineering Ph.D. graduate, and scientific advisor Prof. Romain Fleury.
Receiving Venture Kick funds at this stage will help MinWave expand marketing and business development activities. minwave.ch
NexMR: NMR-based fragment screening made easy
Fragment-based drug discovery (FBDD) successfully brought over forty drugs to the clinics and four to the market. However, state-of-the-art techniques often fail to address the most challenging targets. This is due to the tedious assay development and constraining required sample conditions. Another common problem is the lack of data overlap within the orthogonal methods because experimental conditions may introduce bias. NMR would be an ideal technique but is too slow because of its low sensitivity. Moreover, current methods do not detect the best hits.
NexMR aims to deliver fully characterized hits to support drug discovery pipelines. NexMR was co-founded by CEO Felix Torres, Post-Doc at ETH Zürich, and Matthias Bütikofer currently as a Ph.D. at the group of Prof Roland Riek who helps them as a scientific advisor, and with Anil Sethi, on legal and business negotiations. Thanks to their proprietary technology using sensitivity-enhanced NMR they can screen libraries of thousands of molecules within days. They are also able to characterize the hits without idle time, as their technology encompasses affinity and structure determination. Contrary to state-of-the-art methods (X-ray crystallography, surface plasmon resonance), they only require minimal assay development, allowing them to screen challenging targets which have not been addressed so far. The sample conditions used in NMR are milder and closer to physiological conditions than for other techniques, therefore facilitating the transition to further development. NexMR is committed to supporting drug discovery with highly actionable data. Thanks to their versatile platform, they aim to facilitate the study of challenging systems and to assist biotechs in their journey to address unmet medical needs. Their target is to reach 5% of the fragment screening market in 5 years which is estimated at USD 32M turnover, with a growth of the fragment-based drug discovery market estimated at USD 1.1B.
They plan to use the Venture Kick funds first on ensuring service deliverability. This will enable them to generate initial revenue and gain experience with early customers. nexmr.com.
OVOMIND: a new way to play and stream videogames
Playing with a classic game controller does not allow the gamer to truly express his personality, have experienced humanized AIs, and be immersed in a game. In 2006 Nintendo Wii introduced Motion and removed the barrier of using a classic game controller. Making gaming even more accessible. It was a huge market success, but only the first step of these emerging gaming technologies.
OVOMIND developed a Cloud-based AI affective solution including some patents. Co-founders are CEO Yann FRACHI, CTO Julien and CSO is Mathieu Barthet. The technology computes biosignals from wearable devices (smart bands and smartwatches) and delivers real-time emotional data for interaction. Emotion is the missing part of the perfect Human-Machine interaction. Gaming proposes today, the most advanced Human-Machine Interaction and OVOMIND targeting game streams first and proposes one Software Development Kit to integrate the technology on any games. They are at the MVP stage and looking to do their second seed fundraising round to push their product to the market.
The Venture Kick funds will help them to grow the business development of the company. ovomind.com
Rhovica Neuroimaging: integrating miniature sensors in the EVD
Rapid and safe placement of an external ventricular drain (EVD) is a lifesaving emergency procedure. EVDs are thin catheters, that are inserted into the brain-cavities (ventricles) for fluid-drainage to decrease intracranial pressure (ICP) and for measurement of ICP. Their insertion is one of the most frequent neurosurgical interventions with more than 35’000 insertions per year in the USA. Today, the trajectory for insertion is chosen mostly solely by superficial anatomical landmarks for saving time. This leads to high misplacement rates with the risk of devastating results due to time delay and injury of functionally important structures. Furthermore, once in place, often follow-CTs are performed, to monitor the ventricle size, with associated risks and costs.
Rhovica Neuroimaging’s innovation solves these problems by integrating sensors in the catheter to localize the ventricles and allow a real-time ventricle-monitoring. This enables a safe, fast and cost-efficient EVD-placement and ventricle-monitoring with prevention of devastating complications even in most difficult cases, sparing time, reducing a high number of head-CT scans and costs. Co-Founders Dr. med. Martin Hlavica and Dr. med. univ. Thomas Rhomberg are both from the University Hospital in Bern and work in collaboration with CSEM.
The team estimates the market volume for current EVDs today in Europe and North America of around CHF 60 million per year. Additional EVD functions, as they would provide, would allow a higher price, leading to a higher market volume.
Venture Kick financing would allow them additional funding to pursue the steps on their way building up their company and would be used for the development of a working prototype in the scope of an Innosuisse Innovation Project.
