We led the round alongside a Swiss business angel, with IndieBio New York participating, toward one goal – to back FluoSphera’s groundbreaking mission to reinvent drug research and testing, one clinical trial at a time. This is why its science and dedication stood out to us since day one.
To sense just how revolutionary FluoSphera’s healthtech innovation is, you first need to understand the challenges the global pharmaceutical industry faces today. Sunk costs and wasted time are two of them. Developing a new drug takes on average 10 to 15 years, and costs between $2 and $3 billion. But even investments this significant don’t necessarily imply success – more than 90% new drugs still routinely fail in clinical trials. In oncology, success rates are even below 5%.
This enormous gap between effort and results is mainly caused by the limits of current preclinical tools. Some models rely on traditional 2D cell cultures that can’t accurately predict organ interactions and are therefore incapable of predicting just how precisely compounds will behave in a human body. Others increasingly implement 3D cell cultures but struggle with their costly set-up and maintenance, with many research labs lacking experience and resources for integrating them.
When it comes to in vivo testing, animal models can’t fully mimic the human biology process, and so they often contribute to higher clinical failure rates. They obviously also raise ethical concerns. Ultimately, safety risks are missed, time is wasted, and lifesaving treatments get delayed. It goes without saying the end implications for patients are often fatal. It is becoming painfully clear that the healthcare industry urgently needs a human-based approach that is both affordable and scalable globally.
This is where FluoSphera steps in.
“We’re building the next generation of preclinical tools, not just to get new medicine faster to market and at a lower cost, but also to enhance the quality of drug discovery processes,“ explains Dr. Clélia Bourgoint, CEO of FluoSphera.
Co-founded by Clélia Bourgoint, Gregory Sanda, and Aurélien Roux, the Swiss biotech has developed a multiplexed in vitro platform. It allows drug researchers to combine up to six or seven human tissue models in a single well, using proprietary fluorescent coding to track each one independently. Paired with relative affordability compared to its competitors, human relevance is a key benefit that FluoSphera brings to the table – testing and comparing the reaction of several human tissues makes it possible to precisely mimic and evaluate how an organ reacts.
Efficiency is another one. Unlike existing models that test tissues in isolation or rely on complex organ-on-chip systems, FluoSphera enables the researchers to evaluate the efficiency and potential side effects of drugs in one experiment. What’s more, they can do it early enough to avoid unnecessary animal testing in the next stage.
Hynek Sochor – our Founder – notes: “FluoSphera is opening a multi-billion-dollar opportunity by giving drug developers the means to innovate faster, safer, and more ethically. It represents a completely new approach to developing the next generation of medicines.”
The new standard for preclinical models begins right here.
Needless to say, FluoSphera’s track record speaks for itself. The science is already trusted by a number of biotech and pharmaceutical partners like Epithelix, L’Oréal, Sciomics, or AbbVie, who increasingly use it for antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) testing. With FluoSphera’s platform, drug developers can save between $100 to $500 million per molecule. Furthermore, it also helps them keep up with evolving regulations such as the FDA’s Modernization Act 3.0, a proposed U.S. framework that steers the pharmaceutical industry further away from animal testing. And it doesn’t end here. In the long run, FluoSphera’s technology could potentially open a new chapter of precision medicine by tailoring drug testing to different subgroups of population.
The next step for FluoSphera at this moment? Establishing the new industry standard for in vitro testing across pharma, biotech, and academia. The biotech will use its new funding to scale commercial activities with pharmaceutical companies and CROs, as well as to integrate the platform more fully into drug development workflows. The team also seeks to advance the AI layer for image analysis.
As for us, we’re proud and excited to support them.
For more visit https://www.fluosphera.com
