The Aortyx team is growing! We are happy to bring four new brilliant interns on board to our engineering division.
Alex Rivero is about to finish the double Degree in Industrial Engineering and Business Administration at IQS. He is in charge of industrializing the device that produces AX-GEN01’s stitches.
Àgata Roman is a student of the Marine Sciences and Technologies Degree at UPC. She has joined the simulations team to develop a computational simulation model to validate the permeability of the patch.
Bruno Perales, an Industrial Engineering Master’s student at IQS with a Degree in Economics, will focus his Master’s Thesis on simulating and prototyping new iterations of the AX-GEN01’s deployer.
Helena Xifra, is about to finish the double Degree in Biotechnology and Business Administration, and has joined the biomedicine team to work on the drug delivery platform (AX-GEN02) to prevent aneurysm progression.
Aortyx has been awarded €2.5 million as “Grant First” through the EIC Accelerator program, funded by the European Commission, while doors remain open for another blended equity round in the foreseeable future. Link to the news alert by the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA): https://europa.eu/!FBndyh
The EIC Accelerator supports SMEs to scale up high impact innovations with the potential to create new markets or disrupt existing ones. The call is for innovations that cut across different scientific, technological, sectoral and application areas or represent novel combinations. Still, it importantly considers EU priorities for transitioning to a green, digital and healthy society, as well as the overall strategic planning for Horizon Europe, and the inputs of stakeholders, experts and the EIC pilot Advisory Board.
All applicants were assessed by experts in terms of Excellence (high degree of novelty and good timing in terms of market), Impact (to society and economy) and Level of Risk (team capacity to implement the innovation). Aortyx passed this first filter because of being considered a disruptive technology, having the potential to reach the market and a good commercialization strategy, and having risk and containment plans well defined.
Finally, in the online interview, Aortyx was identified as adding value to one of the relevant areas for the EU in the current period: Strategic Digital and Health Technologies. Focusing on our pipeline’s first product, the AX-GEN01, Aortyx developed a strategy to complete the regulatory tests, put in motion the quality management system, finalize manufacturing and start First-in-Human trials. The EIC Accelerator program support will be essential to reach those critical objectives.
Noemí Balà and Jordi Martorell, co-founders of Aortyx, preparing for the Step 3 telematic Interview phase.
AX-GEN01 is intended to be a technological breakthrough that will be game-changing for Aortic Dissection patients. This disruptive device, consisting of a bioresorbable patch that adheres to the aortic tear plugging the leak and integrating into the aorta’s tissue, is the core of our company. Thanks to the European Commission support, we are proud and hopeful to give a better life to aortic disease patients.
Aortyx was one of the 10 finalists of the Elevator Pitch Competition (EPiC), organized by the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP). This exciting tech start-up challenge invites hundreds of small technologic companies to share their case through an “elevator pitch”. Aortyx earned a US$ 6,000 prize.
An “elevator pitch” is a summary of the start-up’s business model, ideally delivered in a short time but compelling enough to get a follow-up meeting from a potential investor or collaborator. Since 2016, the HKSTP has used this tool to create an international event that has scaled up, attracting significant attention.
This year, the EPiC competition allowed winning up to US$ 100k with a 60 seconds elevator pitch, besides giving the opportunity to meet potential business partners and investors individually and attend intensive training.
More than 600 start-ups from 40 different countries participated, and more than 1500 business leaders, entrepreneurs and investors attended. It is a big success for Aortyx to be honoured by being amongst the Top10 winners companies, taking innovation to new heights.
Carlos Delso, Aortyx' Head of Regulatory Affairs, represented Aortyx as a Catalan small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) at the most significant event for SMEs in Europe, the SME Assembly 2021.
The 2021 SME Assembly was held from November 15th to 17th in Portovoz, Slovenija, organized by the European Comission together with the Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the EU. The assembly featured a combination of high-level panels and interviews, expert roundtables, interactive workshops, informative masterclasses, and innovative networking opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises. Finalizing the conference, members from the European Economic and Social Committee concluded that economic recovery depends on the successful adaptation of SMEs and that the SME policy should focus on digitalization, sustainability and the effort to promote the entrepreneurial spirit.
Carlos Delso, Aortyx’ Director of Regulatory Affairs, presenting at 2021 SME Assembly.
Our Regulatory Affairs Director was invited to attend the assembly alongside with the Biocat delegation and had the opportunity to present the Aortyx’ business case to illustrate the threats for startups and small companies. In his own words, “European startups with potential novel technologies are sinking due to timelines and costs” and “research and innovation advance faster than regulations so potential innovative solutions may not reach the EU market, thus slowing down European progress”, suggesting the need of a new regulatory interaction platform to speed up or adapt to small business’ dialogues. Besides, prolific contacts were made with high profiles from the European regulatory space, which will lead to a bottom-up collaboration with Aortyx to improve the interaction with competent authorities and clearer regulatory pathways for novel technologies or materials.
Dr Inés Moreno, our brilliant Research Scientist, has been awarded the Torres Quevedo fellowship, under Grant number PTQ2020-011126, funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 and NextGenerationEU/PRTR.
The Torres Quevedo program, funded by the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación and the European Next Generation Instrument, aids recognised PhD researchers to develop industrial research projects for three years. This programme stimulates the employment of high profile personnel sufficiently prepared to undertake R&D plans and projects and helps consolidate recently created technology companies.
Dr. Moreno (left) sharing the latest result of an experiment at the lab.
Dr Moreno joined Aortyx as a postdoctoral researcher in 2020 to develop AX-GEN02, which focuses on treating aortic aneurysms by combining the Aortyx’ patches with drugs to revert pro-aneurysmal processes. Her PhD thesis in Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine, conducted at the University of Southampton (UK) and Linköping University (Sweden), led to two published papers and one review in high impact factor journals. She continued contributing to the development and understanding of in vivo models for regenerative medicine in the Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation at QUT (Australia) and the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (Germany). Her extensive experience supports her deep background in in vitro and in vivo testing of biomaterials in angiogenesis beyond the current state of the art.
The European Commission business coach Julio Marco Barroso has shared a full day coaching session with the Aortyx’ team.
Julio is one of the European Top 3 Business Coaches with over 13 years of experience advising senior managers and teams of multinational healthcare companies in developing organizational capabilities and executive skills. He has worked as a business coach with more than 100 companies for the SME Instrument H2020 and has been General Secretary of the International Coach Federation Spain.
The Aortyx team had the pleasure to deeply explore its corporative culture, shared vision, organizational values with Julio and work on the team’s lineup in terms of objectives and values.
Aortyx is on fire! We have successfully closed our crowdfunding campaign at Capital Cell. We are really honored to receive the trust of more than 500 investors that have supported us through the last month.
This major event is the first of a huge milestone domino effect. The most immediate milestone is the finalization of our first product’s pre-clinical experiments. Consecutively, in 2022, the First In Human (FIH) trials will begin in Spain. Then, we will be just a few steps away from helping thousands of aortic dissection patients and vascular surgeons.
Besides, Aortyx has recently entered the MedLim program initiated by Medtronic and LIOF, together with Medace BV, and imec. In this program, we will be working with the most relevant experts of the medical device industry to accelerate the development of our first product.
The path awaiting Aortyx is tedious, nonetheless we are encouraged and excited to get as much involved as possible. Let`s go for it!
We have launched an equity crowdfunding investment campaign at CapitalCell.es! The objective of this bridge round is to raise 1.6 M €, to increase the value of the company by finalizing the industrialization of our portfolio’s first product and performing the last preclinical experiments to validate our technology, in animals. Furthermore, these funds will help Aortyx to reach the First in Human by 2022.
We are proud to say that in just one week, Aortyx has raised already more than 1.000.000 €! This major event has been published by relevant national media such as La Vanguardia and La Razón.
Since our seed round in 2019, our assets have evolved spectacularly. Our first product is close to being completely industrialized and its preclinical tests are going to be finished very soon! This round has arrived with the perfect timing. Just a few weeks ago, Aortyx reached a very important milestone of its preclinical plan demonstrating, in animals, that the patch resists blood flow and stays adhered to the aorta for days. This great news really encourage us to keep working hard and engage as much as possible with everyone around us. For that reason, we want to give you the opportunity to invest in our project and become part of the solutions of the future!
It seems that the best is yet to come at Aortyx! Go check our campaign at Capitalcell.es and be a part of us!
We are proud to be the winners of the Àlex Casta Awards First Edition. These awards are a joint initiative by the biomedical ecosystem in memory of Dr. Àlex Casta, a well-renowned professional in the Catalan healthcare and Life Sciences sector who sadly left us in December 2018 due to a fatal aortic dissection.
Aortyx was selected among twenty-eight projects according to their innovation, social impact and potential market by the Evaluation Committee. The selected five finalists, Aortyx amongst them, were invited to give a pitch presentation during the presentation of the BioRegion Report last September 28th in Barcelona, and the event was highly followed in live streaming. Our CEO, Dr. Martorell, presented a very exciting five minutes’ pitch about Aortyx disruptive strategy of changing the paradigm of endovascular repair in aortic dissection.
Aortyx was ultimately selected as the winner of a fierce competition in which all the projects presented were exciting and innovative. We were extremely pleased to receive this award in the shape of a commemorative trophy and a free 1-year subscription to the CataloniaBio & HealthTech Association. Moreover, this trophy has given Aortyx a greater visibility in the communication channels of Genesis BioMed, as well as the prestige of being selected amongst the most successful, cutting-edge and innovative projects in the sector.
Aortyx follows Àlex Casta’s signature: individual and team effort, integrity, and passion. We will continue to endeavour our efforts to bring our strategy to the clinic, and hence have a greater impact in society, like Àlex Casta did.
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