French EIT Health-supported start-ups raise €58.5M over 2 months

€58.5 million. This is the total amount of funding raised between the beginning of September and mid-October by 5 French start-ups supported by EIT Health, which will use these funds to pursue the development of their technology, despite the current health and economic contexts.

SideROS

Early September, SideROS, a biotechnology company specialised in oncology and harnessing research work from the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), had closed a 1 million euros funding. The latter is brought half by a pool of Business Angels in the form of equity, and half by the support of the French public investment bank Bpifrance and Paris Region, in the form of grants and loans.

The start-up announced that the €1M will be used to fund its research into how to tackle relapse and metastasis in cancer.

SideROS is supported by EIT Health through the Headstart 2020 programme, through which the start-up is strengthening the preclinical part of its Phase 1 clinical trial application, opening potential applications for many cancers with therapeutic failure.

Read the official press release here.

VitaDX

VitaDX, an EIT Health Success Story, completed a €3 million financing round, with both its historical investors and its financial partners.

VitaDX exploits research carried out by Paris Hospitals (AP-HP), the University of South-Paris and the CNRS to develop innovative medical devices based on image processing and artificial intelligence for cancer diagnostics. Its CE-marked software VisioCyt® aims to serve as a diagnostic aid solution, meeting the needs of pathologists and urologists, without altering their current practice and requiring no specific training to perform or interpret the analysis.

This new funding will allow VitaDX to:

• Promote the VisioCyt® solution to Key Opinion Leaders in urology and pathology throughout Europe
• Implement an ambitious strategy to access reimbursement in Europe
• Support the technical and regulatory advancement of VisioCyt® in the US
• Pursue the development of new indications exploiting VitaDX’s know-how and technological assets

VitaDX was supported by EIT Health through the Catapult programme, where they won the 2^nd prize of the Medtech category in 2018, and the Go Global Programme to China in 2019. The start-up benefited from financing and coaching from several EIT Health experts on strategy and oral presentation, as well as networking opportunities with industry players and Venture Capitalists – all of which helped boost their activity.

Read the official press release here.

GLEAMER

On 24 September 2020, start-up GLEAMER announced raising €7.5 million in a Series A round, with both previous and new investors, and 37 radiologists.

GLEAMER develops an AI platform capable of delivering semi-automated diagnosis of medical images. Its first software BoneView®, detects traumatic injuries in radiographic images and submits them to radiologists for final validation. It received a CE mark for Class IIa medical devices in March 2020 and is already used by more than 50 public and private hospitals in France, and 800 radiologists.

This new funding will allow GLEAMER to:

• Boost the market launch of BoneView® in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America
• Obtain the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance to market BoneView® in the US
• Pursue the development of GLEAMER’s AI product line in other areas of radiology

GLEAMER was supported by EIT Health in 2019 through the Headstart programme.

Read the official press release here.

SurgAR

Early October, SurgAR, supported by EIT Health in 2020 via the Headstart programme, announced closing its Seed fund raising at €2.5M including €1.75M in equity.

Thanks to this first fund raising, SurgAR takes a major step in its development, and expects to receive regulatory authorisations for its surgical assistance software in gynaecology, finalise its development and receive authorisations for other surgical applications, and ensure pre-marketing for its market access from 2022 onwards.

EIT Health supports SurgAR in its European ascension, in everything that relates to regulation, CE marking and networking.

Read the official press release here.

SparingVision

SparingVision closed a €44.5M fundraising on 21 October, with current and new investors.

These funds will primarily be used to advance the development of the start-up’s treatment SPVN06 for the mutation-agnostic treatment of retinitis pigmentosa. Specifically, the funding will support SparingVision’s GMP activities, regulatory activities, and the conduct of a first-in-man study scheduled to start in 2021. SparingVision also intends to expand its management team and start operating in the US.

At the end of 2019, SparingVision had won the 1^st prize of the EIT Health Catapult pitch competition in the biotech category, gaining extensive visibility towards European investors.

Read the official press release here.

More than ever, the past few months have shown us that it is essential to strengthen the support available for health innovation in Europe. We are happy to see that despite the challenging start to the year, these start-ups were able to successfully raise the funds necessary to pursue the development of their solutions.

If these stories inspire you to join the EIT Health network, you can find out more here: https://eithealth.eu/what-we-do/accelerator/