Helsinki-based CurifyLabs, a HealthTech firm, has raised €6.7 million to moderniwe and automate the manufacturing of compounded drugs, aiming to make them safer and higher fitted to the precise, particular person wants of sufferers.
The funding spherical was led by Springvest, a Finland-based development funding initiative with personal traders, and features a €1 million DeepTech mortgage from Enterprise Finland. The funding can be used to scale CurifyLabs’ operations and safe high-volume prospects out there.
“The present strategy to manufacturing compounded drugs is outdated and poorly optimised – failing each pharmacies and the sufferers they serve. Even with extremely skilled pharmacists and trendy tools, the method stays unnecessarily labor-intensive, vulnerable to human error, and inconsistent in high quality. This could imply that sufferers with critical circumstances could not obtain correct dosages tailor-made to vital components like age, weight, and illness severity.
“The results are actual: a 9-month-old child with most cancers, for instance, can not swallow normal tablets and requires a rigorously customised formulation. It’s time to work collectively and modernise how we ship personalised medication – as a result of each affected person deserves remedy that really suits their wants,” says Charlotta Topelius, CEO and Co-founder of CurifyLabs.
Based in 2021, CurifyLabs has raised a complete of €17.6 million and has native places of work in Finland, the USA, and Germany. The staff boasts a number of a long time of expertise within the pharmaceutical and compounding industries. CTO and Co-founder Niklas Sandler is a Professor in Pharmaceutical Expertise at Åbo Akademi College in Finland.
In keeping with CurifyLabs, custom-prepared medication, often known as compounded drugs, are vital when commercially obtainable choices aren’t appropriate for the person affected person as a consequence of dosage necessities, potential allergy symptoms, dosage kind limitations or drug shortages. Pushed by growing older populations, power illnesses, provide chain disruptions, affected person demand, and different components, the worldwide compounding market, at present price €15 billion, is rising (5.5% CAGR).
Historically, when a affected person wants personalised medication, a health care provider writes a prescription after which a pharmacist creates the remedy by measuring and mixing the components manually.
CurifyLabs says this course of is gradual, pricey and essential for weak affected person populations, akin to kids and most cancers sufferers. In fact, 50% of medicines are not available in doses or formulations approved for children. Just 1% of drugs are personalised through compounding, despite increasing demand.
“CurifyLabs addresses vital inefficiencies in pharmaceutical compounding whereas considerably bettering remedy security and efficacy for weak sufferers, like kids. We’re seeing speedy development of the worldwide compounding market which presents an distinctive alternative for brand new options which have the potential to be ten occasions higher than the present methods to resolve the identical challenges,” says Aki Soudunsaari, CEO of Springvest Plc.
CurifyLabs has developed an answer to automate the manufacturing of compounded medication, reportedly making the method 4 occasions quicker and enabling limitless dosing flexibility. The Compounding System Resolution combines service brokers and energetic components, in addition to {hardware} and software program, and high quality management to automate the manufacturing strategy of tailor-made medicines.
Within the course of, CurifyLabs’ excipient bases, inactive service brokers, are blended with energetic pharmaceutical components from uncooked supplies or crushed tablets. The mixture is then allotted within the desired dosage kind, like tablets or liquid, by the Pharma Printer, a desktop-sized compounding robotic. An built-in, cloud-based formulation library guides the pharmacist by way of a validated compounding course of, and high quality management instruments guarantee mass uniformity and take away the chance of human errors.
“Concurrently, CurifyLabs’ entry into the U.S. market, the place the overwhelming majority of compounding manufacturing happens, positions CurifyLabs for substantial development,” Soudunsaari continues. “We’re delighted to accomplice with them and we’re assured that the corporate’s decisive development steps and progressive strategy will make a significant distinction in individuals’s on a regular basis lives, globally.”
Along with the funding spherical, CurifyLabs has introduced the launch of RoboPharma, a €5.6 million EU-funded initiative aiming to create an AI and robotics-driven, decentralised pharmaceutical manufacturing platform. It goals to reinforce disaster preparedness throughout Europe by enabling high-precision manufacturing of important medicines on the level of care. CurifyLabs is about to steer the initiative, which incorporates six companions throughout Europe.
Funded by way of the EU4Health programme, the venture addresses probably the most urgent challenges in European healthcare: the fragility and inflexibility of centralised pharmaceutical provide chains throughout crises akin to pandemics, pure disasters, and international disruptions. The mission is to develop and deploy a scalable pharmaceutical manufacturing platform for hospital and group pharmacies.
“We’ve got already began operations within the U.S. and are aiming to develop shortly by way of securing high-volume prospects. Automated manufacturing of personalised medication will present higher remedy security for sufferers and assist pharmacies decrease working prices. We’re going to see a significant paradigm shift within the manufacturing of personalised medication, pushed by growing older populations, power illnesses, provide chain disruptions, affected person demand, and different components,” concludes Topelius.
