Swisscom Ventures is an venture capital arm of Swisscom AG, that specializes in early stage tech investments founded in 2007. Swisscom Ventures invests in growth companies with emerging business models and technologies of strategic relevance to Swisscom's core business. As a value-add investor, Swisscom brings its investees the technical expertise and strategic insights of an incumbent telecom operator. We act as a bridge to Swisscom's operational business units, which portfolio companies can also leverage as a test environment for their products and services. Swisscom Ventures seeks minority stakes in companies related to the information/communications/entertainment space.

Swisscom Ventures

As a swiss investment and consulting company headquartered close to the Basel global life sciences hub, our main focus is to bring innovative drugs, medical devices and in vitro diagnostics to the market.   We specialize in supporting start-ups. Working closely with your management team, we offer tailored solutions to accelerate your project into a successful and sustainable business.   Our team of life science, legal and financial professionals covers a wide range of expertise. From development support like preclinical/clinical trial management, regulatory affairs, quality assurance, CMC and medical affairs, to business coaching, marketing strategy, intellectual property creating and finding financing solutions, we know how to successfully bring a product from the lab to the market.   Our offices in Switzerland, Germany and USA work closely with local health authorities, patient groups, contract research organizations and key opinion leaders.

Hemex

Verve Ventures is a European startup investment platform for qualified and institutional investors. Their fully digital platform enables private investors to build a diversified portfolio with investments starting at CHF/EUR 10'000. Since its launch in 2010, Verve Ventures has invested more than EUR 130 million in over 100 startups. Their community consists of 5’000 registered qualified private investors, family offices, and pension funds. Several institutional investors such as a large Swiss pension fund and numerous corporates also rely on their expertise to invest in promising startups. Verve Ventures is backed by Switzerland's third-largest bank, Zürcher Kantonalbank. They have a dedicated investment team based in Zurich, Lausanne, Berlin, Paris, and Cambridge, that screens thousands of startups each year and selects the top 1% after a rigorous due diligence process. They are reshaping the European venture capital landscape and granting investors superior access to this traditionally intransparent asset class. They source the best deals, and structure rounds, and enable their investors to participate in competitive startup deals.

Verve Ventures

4FO Ventures

Mirabaud et Cie was founded in 1819 and is one of the oldest banks in Switzerland.[6] Family-owned and operated, the bank has played a key part in the construction and development of the Swiss financial system, helping co-found the Geneva Stock Exchange in 1857. In 1973, it pioneered the development of Swiss hedge funds.[9] In 1985, Mirabaud opened its first foreign bureau in Montréal, followed in 1990 by the reinforcement of its historical presence in London. The first Asian office was opened in Hong Kong in 1997 and one year later, the bank reinforced its presence in Switzerland by opening its first subsidiary in Zurich. In 2001, Mirabaud significantly grows its asset management teams in Geneva and London. The same year, the Group creates LPP Gestion SA to operate in the field of liability management services for pension funds. From 2003 onwards the Group continues to solidify its presence in the EU, Switzerland, and the Middle East: a new subsidiary opens in Paris, a majority stake in Jenni & Cie (Basel) is purchased in 2004, and another banking office opens in Dubai in 2007. In 2010, the Group acquires Venture Finanzas in Spain and pursues its strategic implantation by opening offices in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Seville. In 2011, Mirabaud consolidates its asset management activities in Luxembourg by creating Mirabaud Asset Management (Europe) SA. A bank (Mirabaud & Cie (Europe) SA) follows in 2014. In 2015, the Group announces the acquisition of two further banking licenses in Spain and France. The group undergoes a major structural change in 2014: Mirabaud's activities become integrated into Mirabaud SCA, a Swiss corporate partnership.

Mirabaud

Scailyte

Scailyte has established a data-driven biomarker discovery platform that leverages unique expertise in single-cell data analysis and artificial intelligence. We are utilizing this platform to discover a new class of biomarkers, which are defined by the molecular profiles of disease-associated cells. This phenotypic approach to biomarker discovery is radically new and directly related to the biology of a disease, which maximizes the success rate for discovering sensitive and robust biomarkers.

<div>Swiss-based Scailyte focuses on extracting insights and biosignatures from complex multi-omics, single-cell data using AI. The company&rsquo;s platform, ScaiVision, can integrate diverse datasets regardless of the medical indication or cell type under consideration. It employs data augmentation and a cluster-free methodology to extract information while preserving the individuality of single-cell data.</div>

Artificial intelligence is identifying and testing new therapies faster than ever.

AI Drug Discovery

Scailyte Strengthens Its Leadership

<div>
 
 Swiss-based Scailyte focuses on extracting insights and biosignatures from complex multi-omics, single-cell data using AI. The company&rsquo;s platform, ScaiVision, can integrate diverse datasets regardless of the medical indication or cell type under consideration. It employs data augmentation and a cluster-free methodology to extract information while preserving the individuality of single-cell data.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 Scailyte has partnered to apply its platform in various clinical projects, such as CAR-T cell therapies, oncology, and immunology, with many companies such as:
 
 
 - 
 <a href="https://www.lexogen.com/scailyte-and-lexogen-create-a-joint-biomarker-discovery/#:~:text=precision%20medicine%20companies-,Scailyte%20and%20Lexogen%20create%20a%20joint%20biomarker%20discovery%20workflow%20for,solutions%2C%20announce%20a%20strategic%20partnership.">
 Lexogen
 </a>
 (July 2021), to identify disease-specific biomarkers using multimodal single-cell datasets&nbsp;
 
 
 - 
 <a href="https://scailyte.com/news/scailyte-ag-announces-a-partnership-with-sirona-dx/">
 Sirona DX
 </a>
 (April 2022), to advance the development of therapies
 
 
 - 
 <a href="https://scailyte.com/news/nilogen-and-scailyte-joining-forces/">
 Nilogen Oncosystem
 </a>
 (July 2022), to increase cancer therapies and personalize cancer treatment
 
 
 - 
 <a href="https://scailyte.com/news/scailyte-announces-collaboration-with-turnstone-biologics/">
 Turnstone Biologics
 </a>
 (March 2023), to find biomarkers that can clinically respond to tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy&nbsp;
 
 
 - 
 <a href="https://scailyte.com/news/scailyte-and-maxivax-solve-clinical-challenges-with-data-driven-collaboration/">
 MaxiVAX
 </a>
 (July 2023), to understand the biological factors that influence how patients respond to the treatment.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In September 2022, the company raised CHF 6 million (~USD 6.7 million) in a 
 <a href="https://scailyte.com/news/scailyte-closes-series-a-with-chf-6-million/">
 Series A
 </a>
 funding round led by Mirabaud to support the company's future milestones.
 
</div>

<div>
 
 HiberCell is a biotechnology company that develops novel therapies focused on oncology. It entered the AI drug discovery space when it acquired AI genomics analysis company Genuity Science (and its subsidiaries in Iceland and Ireland) in August 2021.&nbsp;
 
 
 Genuity Science&rsquo;s solutions include end-to-end therapeutic discovery and development services such as building custom disease datasets, discovering and prioritizing targets, identifying biomarkers, and optimizing clinical trials. Genuity Science leverages its AI-powered platform to manage, process, and analyze genomic data. HiberCell intends to use Genuity Science&rsquo;s AI/ML capabilities to advance its oncology pipeline of five programs, of which one has reached the Phase 2 clinical trial stage.
 
 
 As of March 2024, the company&rsquo;s pipeline included three drug candidates, namely: 1) HC-7366, targeting the general control nonderepressible 2 (GCN2) kinase as part of the integrated stress response (ISR) signaling pathway; 2) HC-5404, aimed at inhibiting the PKR-like endoplasmic reticulum kinase (PERK) involved in the unfolded protein response (UPR) signaling pathway; and 3) odetiglucan, a therapy targeting tumor-immune interactions within the tumor microenvironment​.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 In December 2023, HiberCell and Merck &amp; Co partnered to conduct a Phase Ib trial to evaluate the combination therapy of belzutifan and HC-7366 for treating clear cell renal cell carcinoma. Further, in January 2021, the company partnered with Biodesix to develop an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay as a companion diagnostic test.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://hibercell.com/news/hibercell-closes-67-4-million-series-b-financing-and-secures-30-million-debt-facility-from-hercules-capital/">
 May 2021
 </a>
 , HiberCell completed a Series B financing round, raising USD 67.4 million, and secured an additional USD 30 million in debt financing from Hercules Capital. The funds were expected to be used for clinical advancement of its novel therapeutic candidates. 
 
</div>

HiberCell

<div>
 
 Arbor Biotechnologies specializes in gene editing to develop novel therapeutics for a variety of indications, starting with liver-related diseases. It operates an AI-powered biodiscovery platform to discover novel CRISPR enzymes, which are sequences of repeating genetic code. To do this, its platform deploys computational search techniques, genome sequencing, gene synthesis, and high-throughput screening. This can eventually be turned into drugs or even applied to agriculture and other industrial uses. In 2018, the company announced the discovery of Cas13d, a new type of gene editing enzyme that helps to alter RNA to treat genetic diseases.&nbsp;
 
 
 As of February 2024, the company had five internal drug discovery programs, of which one was in the IND-enabling stage. It also has multiple collaborative programs under development focused on oncology and various other therapeutic areas.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company has a long-standing partnership with Vertex Pharmaceuticals since
 <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190103005194/en/Vertex-and-Arbor-Biotechnologies-Establish-Collaboration-to-Discover-Novel-Proteins-to-Advance-Discovery-of-Gene-Editing-Therapies">
 January 2019
 </a>
 , which focused on developing gene-editing treatments for cystic fibrosis and four other diseases. The alliance was further extended in 
 <a href="https://www.biospace.com/article/vertex-and-arbor-strike-a-1-2-billion-deal-for-gene-editing-programs/">
 August 2021
 </a>
 and 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15741">
 January 2023
 </a>
 .&nbsp;
 
 
 Other partnerships included a collaboration with 
 <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/arbor-biotechnologies-announces-collaboration-with-ginkgo-bioworks-to-advance-the-discovery-and-development-of-precision-gene-editors-302011991.html">
 Ginkgo Bioworks
 </a>
 (December 2023) to leverage Ginkgo's R&amp;D services to further optimize Arbor's novel precision editors, a non-exclusive licensing agreement with 
 <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/02/08/2380680/0/en/EdiGene-and-Arbor-Biotechnologies-Announce-Worldwide-Non-exclusive-License-Agreement-to-Advance-Ex-Vivo-Engineered-Cell-Therapy-Programs.html">
 EdiGene
 </a>
 (February 2022) to leverage Arbor&rsquo;s platform for ex vivo oncology therapies, a strategic research and non-exclusive licensing agreement with 
 <a href="https://investors.tcr2.com/news-releases/news-release-details/tcr2-therapeutics-and-arbor-biotechnologies-establish">
 TCR2 Therapeutics
 </a>
 (January 2022) to develop allogeneic TRuC T-cell therapies using Arbor&rsquo;s CRISPR technology, and a license agreement with 
 <a href="https://www.lonza.com/news/2020-12-23-14-00">
 Lonza
 </a>
 (December 2020) to use Arbor&rsquo;s gene-editing technology for Lonza&rsquo;s bioproduction products and services.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In its latest Series B funding round in November 2021, which was led by Ally Bridge Group, TCG Crossover, and Temasek, Arbor Biotechnologies raised USD 215 million. The proceeds of the round were earmarked to fuel the company&rsquo;s clinical development pipeline.
 
</div>

Arbor Biotechnologies

Based in the UK, Arctoris provides an automated drug discovery platform, offering fully validated research and development (R&amp;D) processes under an Experiments-as-a-Service model. The company works with biotechnology companies, AI drug discovery companies, pharma and academic institutions enabling these institutions to run experiments in Arctoris’s platform and provides on-demand access to a broad scale of datasets for AI drug discovery companies to train their algorithms.

Arctoris

<div>
 
 Frontier Medicines leverages AI/ML technologies to develop treatments for cancer-causing proteins that are dismissed by traditional pharma companies as undruggable.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company has a proprietary chemoproteomic platform which entails an approach based on the interaction of small-molecule compounds and proteins to screen a large number of targets and combine them with a protein database that contains more than 150,000 novel binding pockets (hotspots). This enables it to access 90% of the human proteome that were not previously targeted due to lack of hotspots. The platform&rsquo;s AI/ML engine incorporates a library of diverse compounds, a hotspot map that serves as the starting point for understanding the druggability of a potential therapeutic target, and lead design and generation.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company focuses on oncology and immunology target and, as of February 2024, it had five wholly-owned therapeutic programs and three AbbVie-partnered programs in its pipeline. All programs were in their discovery stage, except the company&rsquo;s lead candidate, FMC-376 (activated and inactivated forms), focused on treating different cancer types, including non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), colorectal carcinoma (CRC), and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), which is in the IND-enabling stage.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company entered a USD 100 million partnership with 
 <a href="https://news.abbvie.com/2020-12-02-AbbVie-and-Frontier-Medicines-Establish-Global-Partnership-to-Discover-and-Develop-Novel-Therapies-and-E3-Degraders-Against-Difficult-to-Drug-Targets">
 AbbVie
 </a>
 In December 2020 to develop small-molecule therapeutics against hard-to-drug protein targets including around 600 E3 ligases (the enzymes that drive the ubiquitination and degradation of proteins.&nbsp;
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In July 2021, the company raised USD 88.5 million in a 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4347">
 Series B
 </a>
 funding round co-led by Woodline Partners LP and RA Capital Management, with equal participation from Deerfield Management Company. The proceeds were earmarked for advancing the company&rsquo;s drug pipeline and expanding operations in Boston, where its new facility was to complement the company&rsquo;s headquarters in California. 
 
</div>

Frontier Medicines

<div>
 
 Verge Genomics is a biotechnology company engaged in developing therapeutics for neurological diseases using human genomics and AI to accelerate drug discovery. The main target areas are Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson&rsquo;s Disease (PD), and Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD).&nbsp;
 
 
 It has built a proprietary all-human platform (unlike standard clinical trials that rely on animal data), called CONVERGE, that uses data sets from brain tissue samples of deceased patients with ALS and PD. While most drugs target only one gene at a time, the company claims its technology can identify hundreds of genes that cause disease and develop drugs that target all the genes at the same time. The company uses AI technology to optimize the drug discovery process as a whole.
 
 
 As of March 2024, Verge had one drug candidate in the clinical stage (Phase I) and 10 drug candidates in the discovery stage.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company has partnerships with various tissue banks (such as Harvard University and University of Miami Miller School of Medicine) and several educational institutes and foundations (such as Target ALS, Answer ALS) that enabled its drug discovery platform.&nbsp;
 
 
 In addition, the company&rsquo;s customers include several pharmaceutical companies, such as 1) 
 <a href="https://www.vergegenomics.com/news-blog/verge-genomics-announces-research-collaboration-with-the-sheffield-institute-for-translational-neuroscience">
 Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN)
 </a>
 to accelerate the validation of novel drug targets and screening of drug compounds for Parkinson's disease (February 2021), 2) 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4146">
 Eli Lilly
 </a>
 to research and develop novel therapies to treat ALS (July 2021), 3) 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21707">
 Alexion
 </a>
 to identify novel drug targets for rare neurodegenerative and neuromuscular diseases (September 2023), and 4) 
 <a href="https://www.vergegenomics.com/news-blog/verge-genomics-and-the-pritzker-neuropsychiatric-disorders-research-consortium-form-cutting-edge-schizophrenia-research-collaboration">
 Pritzker Neuropsychiatric Disorders Research Consortium
 </a>
 to analyze data from schizophrenic patient&rsquo;s brain tissue with Verge&rsquo;s technology (October 2023).
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In December 2021, Verge raised USD 98 million in an oversubscribed 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/7426">
 Series A
 </a>
 funding round led by BlackRock. The funds were used to scale up its pre-clinical and clinical candidate programs in the pipeline and enhance its lead therapeutics through clinical testing. 
 
</div>

Verge Genomics

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies providing their ML platform to other pharma companies for drug discovery services such as target selection, validation and lead optimization.

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies providing their ML platform to other pharma companies to design and run preclinical experiments.

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies providing their ML platform to other pharma companies to identify biomarkers (measurable biological signs used to determine disease progression) and predict drug response. 

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies aggregating and analyzing biomedical data with the help of AI to generate insights across the drug development pipeline.

Biotechnology companies that have integrated AI as a core component of their in-house drug development process. They typically have a few in-house drug development programs, and also collaborate with pharma companies to develop certain drugs.

Companies leverage GenAI to support drug discovery through accelerated drug designing

Companies offer AI/ML-based SaaS products to accelerate the discovery and development of novel therapeutics

Offers AI/ML-based solutions to accelerate drug discovery and development

Leveraging personal data for custom-fit diagnosis and treatment

Precision Medicine

PROMINENT_CATEGORY

<div>
Scailyte, an AI biomarker discovery company, has sold its endometriosis diagnostic assets and linked IP to biotech firm Hera Biotech. The two companies will also collaborate on endometriosis treatment tools. Following the acquisition, Hera will incorporate Scailyte's assets to speed up the development of clinical tools for diagnosing and categorizing endometriosis leading to development of related therapies. The company is set to launch a diagnostic assay for endometriosis by late 2024 in the US fertility market and a second product based on a proprietary technology for definitive diagnosis and staging to follow after.
</div>

Scailyte

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