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 15^th to 17^th 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.

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 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!

Thank you for trusting Aortyx!

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 perform 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 from being completely industrialized and its preclinical tests are going to be finished very soon! this round has arrived with the perfect timing. Just 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. These great news really encourage us to keep working hard and engage as much as possible 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!

Seems that the best is yet to come at Aortyx! Go check our campaign at Capitalcell.es and be a part of us!

https://es.blastingnews.com/economia/2021/01/jordi-martorell-esperamos-conseguir-la-aprobacion-a-final-de-2025-o-principio-de-2026-003260944.html

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 28^th 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. 

As the project evolves, the team does coherently.

Aortyx has added four members to the team: a Project Manager, two research scientists and an engineering intern.

Our new Project Manager is Dr. Verena Blume, a Biologist with vast experience in creating scientific contents and science communication to audiences with different backgrounds. She is in responsible for grants management and media communications.

Germán Febas joins the team as Research Scientist. Germán, soon-to-be PhD in Bioengineering, has significant experience in biomaterials and development of medical devices. As a specialist in electrospinning, he will support the team in all tasks related to patch and adhesive manufacturing.

Dr. Inés Moreno will join the team in September. Inés has extensive experience in tissue regeneration, tissue engineering and imaging. After two very successful post-docs at Max Planck and Queensland, she joins Aortyx as a Research Scientist to work on the biological response to our patches.

Francesc Canalejo is an Undergraduate in Mechanical Engineering who has performed a verysuccessful internship in the Engineering Department. He has rapidly integrated and contributed to optimising our deployment system. We hope he comes back after his Erasmus in Politecnico de Milano.

We are grateful for the labour developed by Idan Bar-Shay and Bruno Perales. We wish them the best in their coming career challenges!

The Spanish Government supports R&D companies and research centers through different programs within the Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación 2017-2020.

Aortyx and IQS continue to partner in the development of our new generation of endovascular devices to treat aortic diseases. The Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación has granted more than 750k€ in a grant-loan combined funding scheme. The grant is a new demonstration of the project’s strength, relevance, and reputation within the Spanish ecosystem.

The grant will secure IP protection, results dissemination, regulatory progress and will support the addition of more staff to both IQS and Aortyx to continue delivering better solutions to aortic disease patients.

The Fundació Catalana per a la Recerca i la Innovació (FCRI) and 11 Catalan universities organize the competition “Explain your thesis in 4 minutes”. With the support of the Catalan Government, this event contributes both to promote research spreading and turn back science to society.

It is focused on PhD candidates who are challenged to explain their investigation to a general audience in a maximum time of 4 minutes with a plain vocabulary and easy to understand structure.

Noemí Balà, co-founder of Aortyx, presented her thesis “Disseny d'un dispositu mèdic pel tractament de les disseccions aòrtiques” won the Universitat Ramón Llull (URL) semifinal and represented the URL at the Final competition on June 25^th, 2020. Find the presentation here: