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GENESIS Biomed. Photo / PCB.
 05.02.2024

GENESIS Tech Transfer Boost incorporates a new partner and makes its third investment

GENESIS Tech Transfer Boost, an investment vehicle managed by GENESIS Biomed, based in the Barcelona Science Park, is adding a new partner. The fund was created in April 2022 with the aim of detecting and investing in early-stage projects in the biomedical sector, whether from hospitals or academic centres, following in the footsteps of its predecessor GENESIS Ventures. To the €1M commitment from founding partners -GENESIS Biomed, FI Group Crowd4Ventures, PINONO S.L. – is now added with a €200,000 commitment.

This new incorporation will increase the number of projects in which to invest, consolidating GENESIS Tech Transfer Boost as a relevant player in the private financing of early-stage projects in the embryonic phase.

In the words of Lian Mariné, majority partner of PINONO: “We are delighted to be an investment partner of a vehicle in the field of Biomedicine, such as GENESIS Tech Transfer Boost. This field, which a few years ago was unknown to most investors, is becoming an attractive sector where the emergence of Deep Tech and new technologies are bringing about a revolution with a high impact on people’s quality of life”.

According to Josep Lluís Falcó, director of GENESIS Tech Transfer Boost and co-founder and CEO of GENESIS Biomed: “The incorporation of a new partner is good news for the vehicle, in particular, and for the biomedical ecosystem in general. The expansion of the fund will allow us to increase the number of early projects in which to invest. This investment will allow the projects to mature so that in the future they can access venture capital investments that will allow them to reach the market“.

The vehicle invests tickets of between €25,000 and €100,000 depending on the nature of each project and its needs, and even provides for the possibility of investing in the pre-constitution phase of projects. The objective of the vehicle is, in a first phase, to continue to carry out investments in biomedicine projects for the remaining three years to later, in a second phase, find exit scenarios that allow the recovery of the investment with its corresponding multiples.

During 2023 GENESIS Tech transfer Boost made two investments. The first investment was carried out in March with the investment of a €100,000 ticket in the IiSPV spin-off, RetinaReadRisk. The biotech company has developed a mobile system based on artificial intelligence to predict diabetic retinopathy. GENESIS Biomed has acted as a venture building platform in this spin-off: in addition to acting as investor and fund manager, it has been assuming the functions of administrator and interim CEO of the company, helping to raise new public funds, and coordinating the regulatory development of the product, and identifying the new CEO recently hired in the company.

The second investment was made in April, where a €25,000 ticket was invested in the biotech company Spinally Medical, a company that has developed and protected a spinal cord stimulation system for the treatment of low back and legs pain.

First investment of 2024: Affirma Biotech

This February GENESIS Tech Transfer Boost has just made its third investment for a ticket of €50,000 in the biotech company Affirma Biotech. The startup was founded in 2020 by Maribel Berges and patented a family of novel immune-activating compounds in 2023. Since there are multiple infectious diseases that can benefit from treatment through immune system activation, these compounds can be used across a broad spectrum of indications.

This GENESIS Tech Transfer Boost ticket -that is part of the closing of an investment round, led by Nara Capital and the Affirma’s current partners- is joined by other funding sources such as NEOTEC, a CDTI programme, and a public-private partnership project, representing a total of €1.75 million in funding.

In the opinion of Josep Lluís Falcó, “Affirma represents a great bet for our portfolio of investee companies, developing new drugs to stimulate the immune system in the treatment of viral and bacterial infections. The participation of Nara Capital and relevant investors from the pharmaceutical sector highlights the potential of immunotherapy extending from oncology to other areas, such as infectious diseases. We are confident that a promising future lies ahead in this field”.

» For further information: GENESIS Biomed website [+]