54gene
Picked by: Cain McClary, founder and managing partner at KdT Ventures
What the company does: 54gene wants to address the knowledge gaps that have made it harder to develop drugs that address certain characteristics of people from Africa. It plans to collect better data from these people and patients before developing drugs internally and also partnering with other drug companies.
Funding raised: $46 million
Number of employees: 162
Why it's going to take off next year: Most of the medications that are available in African countries are imported from abroad, but foreign drugmakers haven't focused much attention on these countries.
That's starting to change.
"From a global business development perspective, it's either 54gene or a Chinese company that's going to come in and start manufacturing drugs in Africa. We prefer an African-first company," McClary said.
McClary said the startup is in conversations with several Big Pharma companies, with a deal coming in 2022.
Allison DeAngelis
Alto Neuroscience
Picked by: Christian Angermayer, founder of Apeiron Investment Group (investor)
What the company does: This Los Altos, California-based biotech is developing new ways to measure brain activity that will lead to better-designed studies for mental-health treatments.
Funding raised: $40 million
Number of employees: 42
Why it's going to take off next year: The startup is off to a fast start since publicly launching in October with $40 million in initial financing. Dr. Amit Etkin left his position as a tenured psychiatry professor at Stanford University to lead Alto as CEO.
Alto already has multiple drug candidates it is developing to treat depression and post-traumatic stress disorder that are in human studies. In addition to making progress on its research, Angermayer said Alto will raise a Series B round in early 2022.
Andrew Dunn
Artios Pharma
Picked by: Barbara Dalton, Pfizer Ventures senior managing partner (investor)
What the company does: UK-based Artios is developing a class of therapies aiming to sabotage cancer cells. Cancerous cells multiply fast in the body and often make mistakes in copying DNA in that process. These cancer cells have ways to repair damage to their DNA. Artios is aiming to block that mechanism, hoping the malignant cells die without hurting healthy ones.
Funding raised: $320 million
Number of employees: 77
Why it's going to take off next year: The biotech is right on the cusp of an inflection point, with its first drug candidates starting human testing.
"Their clinical work is advancing tremendously," Dalton said, who sits on Artios' board. "I'm excited for what they will be able to do in the next year to 18 months."
Andrew Dunn
Babyscripts
Picked by: Cigna Ventures senior vice president Tom Richards (investor)
What it does: The software platform lets medical professionals remotely monitor and manage pregnant and postpartum patients.
Funding raised: $37.12 million
Number of employees: 55
Why it's going to take off next year: Babyscripts' technology reaches both providers and patients using the app to manage their own health, and leans on artificial intelligence to improve routine self-assessments, Richards said.
Overall, maternal and women's health spanning fertility treatment to postpartum care to even menopause management reaches half the population and it's "a large spend area, and an area that's very important to our customers."
Mohana Ravindranath
Beacon Biosignals
Picked by: Cain McClary, founder and managing partner at KdT Ventures
What the company does: Beacon has developed a platform using a test called an electroencephalogram, or EEG, to measure brain waves and identify new biomarkers or targets for neurological disease drugs.
Funding raised: $29.85 million
Number of employees: 25
Why it's going to take off next year: Drug companies need to better understand how the brain works and what's causing different mental-health and degenerative conditions in order to treat them. Beacon and a few other companies are turning to EEGs, which aren't invasive and are already widely available but have been difficult for healthcare providers to interpret.
"Thanks to advances in computational analysis, we can now (hopefully) find signals that have been right in front of us the whole time, expediting drug development and precision medicine in neurotherapeutics," McClary said.
Allison DeAngelis
Daybreak
Picked by: Greg Yap, partner at Menlo Ventures
What the company does: Daybreak is an online mental-health-care company specifically designed for adolescent patients ages 11 through 19. It offers support and services for teens experiencing anxiety, depression, lack of motivation, and academic stress, among other conditions.
Funding raised: $1.95 million, according to Pitchbook
Number of employees: 40, according to Pitchbook
Why it's going to take off next year: "Mental health for adults has a number of competitors, but I think there are some unique aspects to mental health for children and teenagers that require different caregivers and different types of care," Yap said.
Yap says that Daybreak is particularly interesting because it partners with schools, where a lot of children and teens struggle with mental-health issues. However, those settings are typically understaffed and underfunded, making it difficult for teachers or counselors to help students experiencing mental-health conditions in an ongoing way.
Daybreak did not return Insider's request for confirmation on both funding raised and number of employees.
Megan Hernbroth
Eikon Therapeutics
Picked by: Jerel Davis, Versant Ventures managing director
What the company does: Bay Area-based Eikon uses super-resolution fluorescence microscopy to track and measure the movement of individual proteins inside of cells for drug discovery. Dr. Eric Betzig, a founder of Eikon and scientific advisor, shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2014 for his work on the underlying technology behind Eikon's high-resolution microscopes.
Funding raised: $148 million
Number of employees: 75
Why it's going to take off next year: Eikon is now being led by one of the drug industry's most accomplished R&D leaders: Roger Perlmutter, who left the drug-making giant Merck to become CEO of Eikon in May 2021.
"They have brought together an exceptional and diverse team to do this," Davis said.
Andrew Dunn
Equip Health
Picked by: Alyssa Jaffee, a partner at 7wire Ventures; Ambar Bhattacharyya, a managing director at Maverick Ventures; and Holly Maloney, a managing director at General Catalyst
What the company does: Equip Health offers virtual care for eating disorders and illnesses that often accompany them, like anxiety.
Funding raised: $17 million
Number of employees: 64 full-time employees and 49 part-time clinicians
Why it's going to take off next year:It's not easy to get care for eating disorders offline because it often requires inpatient treatment, and there aren't that many centers, per Bhattacharyya and Jaffee. Maverick's research suggests that if more options were available, more people would probably seek treatment.
"Equip is a bridge with a network of providers there to help patients deal with what is really a lifelong chronic condition," Jaffee said.
Megan Hernbroth and Blake Dodge
Firefly Health
Picked by: Holly Maloney, a managing director at General Catalyst
What the company does: Firefly is a health plan and provider, offering virtual primary care, for example, but also helping members find in-person services when needed.
Funding raised: $52 million
Number of employees: 75
Why it's going to take off next year: As 2022 brings more investment in groups that are combining mental and physical healthcare, startups like Firefly which includes access to behavioral-health specialists in its primary-care packages should benefit, Maloney said.
The company's also been effective at driving overall health and patient engagement, she said.
Blake Dodge
Haystack Oncology
Picked by: Christian Angermayer, founder of Apeiron Investment Group
What the company does: Haystack is developing ways to detect trace residue of cancer cells in the blood to identify patients with residual, recurrent, and resistant cancer.
Funding raised: N/A
Number of employees: 20
Why it's going to take off next year: George Petrocheilos, cofounder of Catalio Capital, which has invested in Haystack, said that the company plans to raise a Series A round in the first quarter of 2022. It also plans to release its first clinical-trial data next year, and Petrocheilos said that its cancer-screening blood test could be available as early as the fourth quarter of 2022.
Angermayer said he admires some of the people who founded Haystack, particularly the Johns Hopkins researchers Bert Vogelstein, Ken Kinzler, and Nickolas Papadopoulos, who previously founded Thrive Earlier Detection, another cancer-detection company that was acquired by EXACT Sciences in 2020.
Andrew Dunn
Hazel Health
Picked by: Liz Rockett, managing director at Kaiser Permanente Ventures
What the company does: Hazel provides virtual care to kids in grade school.
Funding raised: $63.5 million, according to Pitchbook
Number of employees: 150 full-time employees
Why it's going to take off next year: School systems play a big role in providing care to kids, especially during the pandemic, but some grade schools aren't equipped to do so. Hazel gives those schools a way to connect kids with a doctor or nurse practitioner virtually, instead of sending the kids to a more expensive medical facility.
"They create a much better safety net around kids and ensure schools can deal with health issues as they arise, and not have to rely on emergency rooms," Rockett said.
Shelby Livingston
Health In Her HUE
Picked by: Brittany Davis, general partner at Backstage Capital
What it does: Health In Her HUE offers an online directory of culturally competent healthcare providers focused on women's health.
Funding raised: $1.05 million
Number of employees: 7
Why it's going to take off next year: Women can use the platform to connect with each other and ask questions, Davis said. It's a "stickiness factor" that keeps patients engaging more regularly instead of only when they have a medical issue.
Mohana Ravindranath
HealthVerity
Picked by: Michael Greeley, general partner at Flare Capital Partners (investor)
Originally posted here:
List: Healthcare and Biotech Startups That Will Take Off in 2022, According to Investors - Business Insider
Recommendation and review posted by G. Smith
