Medical Startups To Watch In 2019
Medical startups are challenged with finding solutions to some of today’s biggest killers. For example, 1 in 3 Americans die every year due to cardiovascular disease alone.
However, with advancements being made every year in the healthcare industry, companies are finding more ways to bring these numbers down. In particular, stem cell research and heart medicines are making great strides.
This article is going to show a few cardiovascular medicines and stem cell therapy startup companies to watch in 2019.
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Codindus Vascular Robotics
Codindus Vascular Robotics s a global technology leader in robotic-assisted vascular interventions. The company’s ‘CorPath System’ uses robots to assist in percutaneous coronary interventions and vascular procedures.
Corindus’ next-generation CorPath GRX System is advancing the field of robotic interventional cardiology, offering improvements in procedural control for the physician, workflow for the technologist, radiation protection for physicians and the potential to reduce radiation exposure for staff and patients.
Codindus Vascular is gaining a lot of attention from leading physicians across the world. Simon Stertzer, a professor at Stanford University and the first doctor to perform coronary angioplasty in the United States, is particularly excited about this company.
Prognos
Prognos is a healthcare startup company leveraging AI to create a large integrated database of multi-sourced clinical diagnostics data.
Prognos applies smartest AI to clinical data to drive the right decisions earlier and improve patient health.
They use HIPAA-compliant infrastructure to provide an interpretation of clinical diagnostics. The platform uses clinical algorithms across more than 30 conditions to predict the patient’s condition early, identify treatment options indicate any risks associated and show opportunities for clinical trials.
The database stores over 16 billion records for over 185 million patients and will only get bigger.
Celularity
Celularity is a biotechnology company that productizes allogeneic cells and tissues derived from the postpartum placenta. These are materials that can help the immune system and amplify the body’s ability to fight disease, heal, and regenerate itself.
Celularity acts as a “biorefinery” to harness the power of the placenta to create therapies across autoimmune and degenerative diseases, immuno-oncology, and functional regeneration. They are the first healthcare company to own and deploy the full value chain from sourcing placental stem cells to patient treatment.
Celularity also has a wide range of biosourcing options, providing access to more stem cells needed for current treatments.
Today’s stem cell transplants are accepted as standard therapy for more than 80 diseases, including common conditions leukaemia but Celularity wants to cure other rare conditions with the use of stem cell therapy.
ViaCyte
ViaCyte is another healthcare startup company in the field of regenerative medicine. Based in California, ViaCyte is creating innovative products to cure diabetes.
They have developed a device called the Encaptra, a cell delivery system, that matures pancreatic beta cell precursors into endocrine cells that secrete insulin and other hormones in a regulated manner to control blood glucose levels.
ViaCyte’s goal is to free patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes from long-term insulin dependence. If successful, ViaCyte’s products will relieve patients of both the acute challenges and risks, as well as the long-term complications, associated with diabetes.
In fact, in January 2019, they announced that a human stem cell-derived product candidate has been implanted in type 1 diabetes patients.
Bay Labs
Bay Labs is another great medical startup company. They are using artificial intelligence, with cardiovascular imaging to help in the diagnosis and management of heart disease, the world’s leading cause of death.
They aim to use deep learning techniques to improve patient outcomes and reduce overall healthcare costs. At NVIDIA’s Inception competition in 2017, Bay Labs was recognized as one of the most promising AI startups in the social impact category.
Their vision is to improve worldwide healthcare and build new solutions that can help patients with long-term clinical problems.
To achieve this, they are putting together a team of experts, including both IT and medical professionals.
Rubius Therapeutics
Rubius Therapeutics are transforming red blood cells into cellular medicines. They are focused on creating life-changing cellular therapies for patients with rare enzyme deficiencies, cancer and autoimmune diseases.
Their medicine is called Red Cell Therapeutics ie RCTs. These are engineered to express biotherapeutic proteins within or on their cell surface to create highly selective, potent and allogeneic cellular medicines aimed at a range of treatments.
They may also be used to treat patients with rare enzyme deficiencies, kill cancer tumours and regulate the immune system.
K Health
K Health is a free, HIPAA-compliant AI healthcare app which collects information about a patient’s medical background. The app uses artificial intelligence to provide insights and tips to manage their conditions and has recently raised another 25 million in funding.
Users enter their symptoms into the app which then provides a list of potential diagnoses.
While this is incredibly useful, what’s even more important is that based on the information entered by the user, the app suggests a list of specialist physicians that can potentially help treat their condition.
Considering 80% of all internet users have searched for health-related topics online, this massive database of healthcare information could help identify conditions early and save millions of lives every year.
ReNeuron
The final company on this list of best healthcare startups is ReNeuron. They are a leading, clinical-stage stem cell business, aiming to develop novel stem cell therapies targeting areas of significant unmet or poorly met medical needs.
Their unique stem cell technologies develop cell-based therapies for significant disease conditions where the cells can be readily administered “off-the-shelf” to eligible patients without needing additional treatments. Their lead stem cell therapeutic candidate targets treating patients left disabled by a stroke.
They are also progressing in their pre-clinical development of exosome nanomedicine platform. Exosomes are nanoparticles secreted into the culture media during the expansion of stem cells. They contain a number of biologically active molecules such as proteins and microRNAs (miRNAs) that can regulate gene expression.
These molecules may unlock therapeutic benefits across a number of disease areas. ReNeuron works closely with a number of key academic and industrial partners to achieve their goals.
Author: Sofia Fernandise
