“Our mission is to create a world where personalized medicine will be made available to everyone. We want to achieve this by merging microelectronics with biology.”

Nikolas Gaio is the CTO of MedTech startup Bi/ond and together with his co-founders Cinzia Silvestri and William F. G. Solano, he is looking to bring innovation to the medical field.

“Microelectronics is being used in a lot of markets but in biology, it has still not been utilized to its full potential,” Nikolas says. “We want to take advantage of that and make a difference.”  

FROM A SIMPLE IDEA

The idea behind Bi/ond evolved as a result of years-long Ph.D. research at the TU Delft. The three co-founders were fascinated by the possibilities that personalized medicine had to offer but were struggling with the little progress that was being made in that field. So they took things in their hands.

“At the moment, medicines and pharmaceutical products are developed based on middle-aged white men, so people from other ethnicities and women are rarely taken into consideration during these development processes,” Nikolas says. “The number of genetic differences plays an important role in how medicines affect different ethnicities, age, and sex.”

The reason why there is not enough progress in the field, he believes, is because current technology is not accurate enough to handle the complexity of the differences between people. Bi/ond hopes to change that.

What the startup is working on is a technology for more accurate drug testing and simulations of any tissue type. “We’ve developed a computer chip with a small blood vessel that can nourish, stimulate and monitor cells. For example, it can stimulate cells in the heart to keep it beating or in the lungs to help them keep expanding,” Nikolas says.

THROUGH YES!DELFT

Supporting the team along the way has been YES!Delft and their community of mentors and experts. One of the biggest challenges for Nikolas and his co-founders has been turning Bi/ond from a research project into a business.  

“We were and still are engineers, so YES!Delft have helped us a lot in improving our technology while also teaching us how to build a company. They took us out of our engineering bubble and showed us what it’s like to run a business,” Nikolas says.

They learned the importance of validating their technology with potential customers and talked to tens of medical professionals to gain insights into their needs and challenges. Currently, Bi/ond is supplying its product to three academic hospitals across Europe and is mostly focusing on its cardiac application.

“Together with our customers, we are now mostly looking into cardiac toxicity,” Nikolas says, “which essentially means that we are trying to find out if a medication is affecting the heart in the wrong way.”

TO A GROWING COMPANY

While the startup does have competitors on the market, Nikolas believes that Bi/ond has a unique advantage. It is the only company currently that combines microelectronics with biology, making it possible to stimulate cells and “bring what is inside the body outside of it,” he adds.  

The hospitals that they are currently working with are different in their approach of using Bi/ond’s technology. Some of them are interested in only buying the chips, while others are also happy to work together with the startup and help develop the technology further.

A little bit further down the line, the team will aim to add biotech companies to its customer base, alongside hospitals. “Our goal is to strike partnerships with such companies later on and establish our credibility in the field.”

Today, Bi/ond is a team of seven and they are well equipped to tackle the challenges that lie ahead. So far, they have been financed via local and international grants as well as a first round of funding from UNIIQ, the proof-of-concept fund of South Holland. Going into 2021, they will be looking at a second, bigger investment.

Nikolas and the team have surely gained momentum over the past year and are moving closer to their mission of making medicine more personalized in the future.

Milestones:

• Collaboration with a complementary biotech company for the development of a Heart-on-Chip model;
• Integration of electrodes and sensors inside the Bi/ond’s product to guarantee “more-than-imaging” to our customers;
• Deal with a pharmaceutical company.

Tailor-made hand braces and orthoses are expensive and not fully tailored to the needs of the person using them. Not to mention, they are not the most beautiful pieces out there. Pieter Smakman came across this problem during his graduation project at the TU Delft and together with his friend and colleague, Robin Jones, took on 3D scanning and printing technology to design and create braces that people love to wear. 

It didn’t take long until the two of them founded Manometric, a Delft-based startup looking to make the above possible for people who need a brace. 

FROM A SIMPLE IDEA

“We believe that braces are a consumer product and the experience of wearing them is more comparable to wearing a watch than a bandaid,” Pieter says. “It enables you to work again and perform your job. A piece of plastic can make a huge difference to someone’s life so it needs to fit the person him- or herself.”

During his Master’s in Integrated Product Design, Pieter came up with the idea of using 3D technology to create 360-scans of a hand and based on them, design a brace that is fully tailored to the person who needs it. The first version of the scanner was far from perfect, but it bore the potential of what it could become. 

“The first time we tried to scan a hand was not easy at all,” Pieter remembers. “Someone had to put their hand up and sit on a turning plateau in front of the 3D scanner so we could capture every angle. You can imagine how hard it is to keep a hand in a steady position even for a couple of seconds, so this was definitely not a very viable solution to collect information.”

Today, close to four years after founding Manometric, Pieter, Robin and their team have made leaps both in terms of their technology and in running a successful business. They are accredited as an orthopedic company, which enables them to see patients and work directly with health insurers. Even during COVID-19 times, they have been able to continue doing that – under strict measures, of course – and it is something that gives the team not only new insights for their research and development, but also a lot of positive energy. 

THROUGH YES!DELFT

Supporting them along the way has been the community of experts at YES!Delft and their international network. Manometric joined the YES!Delft Accelerator Program in September 2017 and quickly learned what it’s like to run a business. 

“The first thing we had to get into our system was to stop being so busy with our technology and instead focus on validating our product. We had to find out if there was a market for it before we spent more resources and effort developing it,” Pieter says.

Their mentor wasted no time in throwing them into the deep. “We were advised to organize a demo day, promote it on Facebook and see if people were willing to participate and pay for it. We went for it, but we were terrified,” Pieter remembers. “It just didn’t feel natural to promote a product that was not fully developed yet.” 

And while the two co-founders were surely outside of their comfort zone, they quickly saw the benefits of approaching their target market early on. They communicated their demo day to a large group of patients and were surprised to receive more than 150 responses overnight. Eventually, about 20 people signed up and traveled from all over the Netherlands to experience Manometric’s technology 

 “That meant a lot to us and it was the point where we knew we were onto something,” Pieter says. 

Those initial insights were what they needed to continue developing their technology. Today, the startup has a 3D scanner that can perform a 360 scan in a hundredth of a second, a software that can automate the production of orthoses and works together with hospitals, clinics, health insurers and other orthopedic companies. 

TO A GROWING COMPANY

Starting out, Pieter and Robin’s goal was to leverage technology in such a way that they could provide patients with the best-fitting hand braces possible, which look good too. At the same time, they also wanted to make the design and creation of those braces more efficient and less labor-intensive. 

“If you look at the traditional patient journey, there is a lot of time from intake to delivering the final product. With our 3D technology, we can achieve results much faster.”

Manometric has been working together with Gerald Kraan, an orthopedic surgeon from Reinier de Graaf hospital in Delft, who has helped them immensely over the past years. With his support, they have been able to develop their software and algorithms, and to make sure that the braces they create perform as well as traditional ones, if not even better.

The startup’s goal going forward is to have their scanners placed in hospitals all over the Netherlands. “Our solution is scalable and we can’t wait to distribute this widely,” Pieter says. 

The process may take some time, but the team has already proven that there is great potential for their technology, across the country and beyond. 

Having been able to disrupt (in a good way) such a traditional industry has certainly brought Pieter, Robin and their team the feeling that they can change people’s lives with their work. What makes it all even more worthwhile, though, is actually seeing the impact of their technology. 

“Not too long ago, one of our patients brought her saxophone to our office, sat down and started playing,” Pieter says. “It was the hand brace that we made for her that enabled her to play her instrument again. You can imagine the surprise on all of our faces.

It is those moments that count the most. It is those moments that remind us of the impact we can make.” 

Milestones of 2020

• A doubling of the team (now 11) with highly talented and experienced people
• More than tripled the revenue of 2019
• Accredited as official Orthopedic Company
• CE Certification for the ManoX 3D Scanner
• Contracts with all Dutch health insurers

Don’t forget to apply for our next Accelerator Program, the application deadline is on the 31st of January.

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