The first edition of “Claus per Emprendre en Tecnologies Mèdiques” took place in February at the IQS School of Engineering in Barcelona. Biocat and IQS Tech Factory joined efforts to create this 4-days course. It gathered experts and entrepreneurs experienced in medical technologies and digital health from all over Catalunya. The aim was to provide attendees the opportunity to learn how to build a medical or technological start-up. 

Noemí Balà, one of the co-founders of Aortyx, was invited to participate in the inaugural session. It was a great opportunity to overview new trends and market positioning, but more importantly how to go from clinical need and a technological idea to market and exit. The course, aimed at students and young researchers, presents the failures, successes, problems and satisfactions that entrepreneurs enjoy and suffer along their uncertain journey.

New year, new incorporation to our team! On January 8^th a new member was added to our crew. Idan Bar-Shay is the new preclinical and clinical manager at Aortyx. He is well experienced in adhering to clinical protocols, training medical staff, and helping to identify and monitor company’s needs. 

He studied at the University of Haifa from 2006 to 2009 a Bachelor of Biological Sciences, and then obtained the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (2010-2014) degree from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 

His work experience began as a Veterinary Technician in 2012. In 2016, he joined Boston Biomedical Associates in Israel, focused on clinical studies preparation, development and submission. He also implemented medical research methods for collecting high-quality quantitative and qualitative data. 

He came to Barcelona in 2018 to join Anaconda Biomed as a clinical specialist in Anaconda BioMed, where he was engaged in protocols, clinical staff training and investigation, before joining Aortyx. His background and experience make him an important addition to our team. We look forward for a successful venture.

Our most recent team member is Bruno Perales de Rocafiguera, a senior-year undergraduate in Mechanical Engineering who joined in March. He will be our intern for four months supporting the R&D engineering team, simulating and optimizing the behavior of our Nitinol deployer. We are happy to have him learning by our side and looking forward to his contribution.

Last but not least, Júlia López has accepted a new career opportunity and joined the project managing team at Oryzon Genomics. We wish her success in this new adventure!

Aortyx has been supported by the Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico Industrial (CDTI) through its NEOTEC program. The objective of this program supporting newborn technology-based companies, helping them with non-dilutive funds to continue developing their technology and adding value to their projects. Aortyx has been awarded the maximum funding amount, 250,000 €.

Aortyx increased its capital with a seed fund of 650,000 € led by Genesis Ventures. This seed round started in February 2019, initially aiming for 300,000 €. The excitemtent from the investors and the updated cash needs made our round the 14^th in Spain in 2019 and the highest without Venture Capitals nor Crowdfunding platforms.

Our CEO and co-founder, Jordi Martorell, states that achieving this round of funding is a recognition of the trust placed by our investors in our daily work and the main objective of Aortyx: saving lives. 

This capital raise has been key to start animal testing and to fix our commercialization objective in 2024. Likewise, we have already started the industrialization process of our prototype and put in motion our quality management system to comply with ISO 13485.

Learn more in the following links:

Aortyx amplía capital en 650.000 euros con una ronda liderada por Genesis Ventures

CATALUNYA.-Aortyx amplía capital en 650.000 euros con una ronda liderada por Genesis Ventures

ENISA is a public institution that offers soft loans to promising Spanish start-ups during their initial stages, when private capital is hard to raise. Being funded by ENISA is not only a great opportunity to raise capital, but also a sign of quality that can generate traction to attract new investors. Aortyx was given a participative loan of €175.000 to fund their business plan.

In mid-2019, Aortyx was selected to participate in the EIT Headstart Program, which included 40,000 € non-dilutive funding and mentoring. After half the program was completed, all the start-ups enrolled in the program had the opportunity to demonstrate the value already created thanks to the program. Moreover, 10.000 € extra were awarded to the most advanced companies in a pitch competition held on December 9^th, the EIT Headstart Pitching Day. 

Thanks to all the team and to our CEO, Jordi Martorell, who presented our global progression, we were one of the awarded companies. This cash prize supports our staff and awards the progress made developing our business plan.

ACCIO (Generalitat de Catalunya) promoted an ambitious mission for empowered female founders and leaders of emerging start-ups based in Catalonia to conquer New York City. The company selection process was very competitive due to the incredible ecosystem of Catalan emerging companies. Luckily, Aortyx was one of the selected start-ups that participated in the program.

After months and great efforts from ACCIO teams in Barcelona and New York and the startups, the mission took place at the end of November. Aortyx was represented by their CTO, Noemí Balà, who used the mission to connect with potential investors and introduce Aortyx in the NYC ecosystem, but also to increase her visibility and continue fighting for genre equality.

New York has a great entrepreneurial atmosphere with more than 9000 start-ups in different sectors and hundreds of enterprise accelerators as well as co-working spaces. Noemí met with a number of empowered women who work in the most influential companies in the world. She and the mission attended the Tech Up for Women event in New York, an event qualified as Top Five Most Insipiring Conferences of 2018 by Forbes. Our co-founder presented Aortyx, along with nine other Catalan female entrepreneurs in the fields of big data, AI, biotechnology and fashion.

Learn more visiting:

10 directivas catalanas, listas para comerse la Gran Manzana

Every year since the early 1970’s, the VEITH Symposium, one of the most renowned vascular conferences in the world, takes place in New York City. It provides vascular surgeons the opportunity of having a complete overview of the most up-to-date, unbiased and balanced state of the art in vascular treatment as well as what important new developments are on the horizon. Through a 5-day rapid presentations format, this conference is the global centrepiece of vascular practitioners and defines the highlight of the annual activity in this sector.

This year, Aortyx had the pleasure of presenting their project in the 46^th Annual VEITHsymposium. Vicenç Riambau, who is not only one of the founders of Aortyx but also one of the most well-known vascular surgeons of the world, presented Aortyx’ new approach to treat aortic damage non-invasively.

The event was a great opportunity for Aortyx to connect with surgeons from all over the world, exchanging views on the unmet needs in aortic disease and to interact with other medical device companies with similar interests.

We are already looking forward to come back in the next edition!

The Generalitat de Catalunya offers scholarships for students willing to develop doctoral theses associated with companies, the so called Doctorat Industrial. Only well-balanced and promising projects and passionate students are able to get benefit of this kind of scholarships.

Pau Teixidó has been cornerstone in the development of our project since 2018, when he performed his master thesis on adhesives for vascular devices. Pau has been awarded a Doctorat Industrial scholarship. This support is critical to continue developing his PhD “Design and development of biocompatible adhesive for vascular patches” in an Aortyx-IQS collaboration.

The EIT Health Fellowship Network Alumni Showcase 2019 took place on November 6-7^th in Lisbon, and Aortyx was there represented by Dr Júlia López Guimet. The EIT Health Fellowship Network is a strong and growing program family (Innovation Fellowships, Starship, and PhD Translational Fellowships) with a proven track record of creating impact and actively targeting the key challenges in healthcare: better patient care, improved population health, and reduced cost. Particularly, the EIT Health Innovation Fellowship Network Alumni Showcase is an annual event where the top alumni showcase their extraordinary success (both entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial) that have come out of the various needs-led innovation programs in EIT Health. The event was held at the Pavilhão do Conhecimento – Centro de Ciência Viva, the largest and most emblematic science center in Portugal, in conjunction with Web Summit 2019 (“The best technology conference on the planet” - Forbes).

The event brought alumni, industry representatives, investors, program management, and EIT Health representatives together to network and learn about what is next on the healthcare innovation horizon. Several inspiring talks were held by Daniel Mogefors, Dr Ursula Mühle, Magdalena Rosenmöller and Peter Kelly; and Aortyx was able to get a glance of the flourishing European health start-up ecosystem by attending the pitch sessions of the Innostars Headstart awardees (Delox, SensoriumLab, SkinSoul, Mindlenses Professional, and others), the Starship fellows and the successfully established start-ups arisen from ET Health’s programs (Loop Diagnostics, NUA Surgical, Breaz, and others). This gathering was an excellent opportunity to share thoughts and first-hand experience on the healthcare innovation sector.