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Jordi Carrera and Rafel Bru, founders of DeepUll, at the company's headquarters in the Barcelona Science Park (Photo: DeepUll).
 07.07.2020

DeepUll closes a €3.5M Series A round to improve early diagnosis of sepsis

DeepUll, with headquarters in the Barcelona Science Park, announced today the closing of a 3.5 million Euro round Series A financing led by Alta Life Sciences and Kurma Partners. This financing will allow the company –founded in 2019 by Jordi Carrera and Rafel Bru to validate the technology and start the development of the first prototypes of a new diagnostic system for early stage sepsis condition. 

 

DeepUll announced today the closing of a 3.5 million Euro round Series A financing led by Alta Life Sciences and Kurma Partners (France) and with participation from Axis Participaciones Empresariales (ICO) and Sofimac Innovation (France), through its new investment fund Pertinence Invest 2 advised by Mérieux Equity Partners. This financing will allow the company to validate the technology and start the development of the first prototypes.

The company, which focuses its activity on the development of a new diagnostic system for early stages sepsis condition, was founded in 2020 by Jordi Carrera and Rafel Bru, who started STAT-Dx in 2010 and led the company until it was sold to QIAGEN in 2018 for $191M. DeepUll’s headquarters are based in the Barcelona Science Park.

Currently, sepsis causes around 11 million deaths each year. Since 2018, sepsis has exceeded the estimated 9.6 million deaths caused by cancer. Early detection that a patient is entering sepsis, when he can still be effectively treated through narrow spectrum antibiotics, is essential in order to improve his prognosis, reduce the mortality and prevent the spread of antibiotic resistance.

DeepUll’s proposal is based on quickly identifying the pathogens and offering the antibiogram within a few hours on the one hand, and on using the data and learning about the patient’s immunological and functional status on the other hand. The system allows doctors to predict the future appearance and evolution of sepsis within a short period of time and thus to provide a suitable clinical response even before the symptoms arise.

With this first round of financing, DeepUll will validate the technologies to be used in building the diagnostic system and will prepare the first prototype in order to confirm the system’s capacity to provide an early diagnosis of sepsis and to offer therapeutic recommendations.

Jordi Carrera, CEO and co-founder of DeepUll, comments: “Being able to close this initial round will give us the means to test the concepts of a new early diagnosis system for sepsis. The support from this specialised investment syndicate from Spain and Europe will be critical for the company’s development thanks to their knowledge and experience in the sector”.

“We here at DeepUll are convinced that the complexity in detecting sepsis must be tackled through the use of predictive analytical techniques that take into consideration both the infection as well as the patient’s response. We are proud to receive the support from such a strong investment syndicate with extensive experience in our sector which will allow the company to materialized its technological proposal and demonstrate its potential”, adds Rafel Bru, CTO and co-founder of DeepUll.

Jose Antonio Mesa, a partner of Alta Life Sciences, comments: “We are thrilled with our investment in DeepUll together with entrepreneurs such as Jordi and Rafel. DeepUll is one of the few examples in the sector with successful serial entrepreneurs, who will tackle an enormous medical need: early diagnosis for sepsis. They also have a well-designed and clearly competitive product profile, which convinced us to invest in DeepUll.”

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