December 20th 2019
Lausanne, Switzerland
Nagi Bioscience raises CHF 1.8 Million to accelerate its mission of setting a new standard for testing safety and efficacy of drugs and chemicals.
Nagi Bioscience SA, a Swiss life-science-tech company developing a revolutionary technology for the in vitro testing of drugs and chemicals, announced today the closing of a CHF 1.8 million Seed financing round. Investors in the round include the leading Swiss venture capital platform investiere, Zürcher Kantonalbank, NEST pension fund and private investors from Switzerland and United States. The proceeds of the financing round will be used to complete the development of Nagi Bioscience’s first product and prepare its market access.
Nagi Bioscience, a spin-off from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), was founded in January 2019. Nagi Bioscience has developed an innovative “Organism-on-Chip” technology, aiming to revolutionize the way toxic and beneficial effects of substances are tested today. This technology relies on the combined use of microfluidics and microscopic worms (the validated biological model C. elegans) to provide a new sustainable alternative to traditional animal testing to pharma, chemical, cosmetic industries and biomedical research. This solution complies with the emerging directives for the replacement, reduction and refinement of animal testing, i.e. the so-called “3Rs” principles, and allows significantly reducing costs and delays of pharmaceutical and chemical research.
“Complex drug efficacy and safety tests that would take months using traditional animal testing now can be carried out on our microfluidic device in only a few days, at a fraction of their current cost and in a fully automated way” says Dr. Matteo Cornaglia, the founder and CEO of the company. “Nagi Bioscience is a great team of dedicated people sharing the vision to create a new class of solutions for faster, cost-effective and sustainable drug and chemical testing in the future. The whole team is excited and honored to get great investors on board that are sharing this vision and providing their expertise to accelerate commercialization and widespread use of our technology”.
Furthermore, the company announces the assignment of Dr. Chris Radloff to the Board of Directors. “I’m following Nagi Bioscience since more than a year and I’m excited to be part of the next phase developing this innovative idea between life science and microfluidics into a business”, says Dr. Radloff. Chris is a board director and angel investor in several start-up companies and brings to the company 20+ years of expertise in the life-science-tech field.
Nagi Bioscience has already prototypes under validation in collaboration with key industrial players in the chemical and biotech fields. The proceeds of the seed round will allow completing product development and preparing market access.
About Nagi Bioscience SA
Nagi Bioscience SA was incorporated in January 2019 by Dr. Matteo Cornaglia, CEO, and Dr. Laurent Mouchiroud, CSO, as a spin-off of Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Swiss institute of Technology in Lausanne) with the vision of revolutionizing drug/chemical testing with innovative organism-on-chip technologies. Since its beginning as a startup project, Nagi Bioscience has been supported by various programs and institutions, including the Gebert Rüf Foundation, Venture Lab (Venture Kick and Venture leaders programs), the European Research Council (ERC-PoC grant), the Swiss National Science Foundation (Bridge PoC project), Innosuisse, and the Novartis Foundation. In addition, Nagi Bioscience already won numerous awards, including PERL BioTech Prize (Lausanne Region Entrepreneurship Prize), Swiss Laboratory Animal Science Association (SGV) Award, PMEP Startup Competition and Fondation Egon Naef (FENRIV) Award.
For more information, please visit Nagi Bioscience website: http://www.nagibio.ch
About Investiere
investiere is the leading European startup investment platform for qualified and institutional investors. Our investment professionals screen thousands of companies and present the best investment opportunities on our digital platform after a rigorous due diligence process. investiere focuses on European high-tech startups. The investiere community consists of more than 4’000 qualified private investors, family offices and pension funds. Furthermore, numerous Swiss corporates rely on investiere’s VC expertise to screen, select and invest in promising startups (clients include Swiss Post, u-blox, a leading Swiss health insurer, as well as a publishing house). With CHF 30 million invested in 2018, investiere is Switzerland’s most active startup investor. Zürcher Kantonalbank, the third-largest bank in Switzerland, is a minority shareholder of investiere. To join our international and growing investor community, visit investiere.ch.