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02/2023 Portfolio

World Cancer Day on February 4

On World Cancer Day, let’s draw attention to one of the biggest challenges in modern medicine. Despite significant improvements in treatment and diagnosis, cancer remains a leading cause of death worldwide, and innovative solutions in the field of cancer research and treatment are needed more than ever.

As an entrepreneurial and science-driven venture capital investor, OCCIDENT is proud to currently support four companies developing novel therapeutic approaches in the fight against this disease. Last year, we further strengthened our oncology portfolio with the Swiss start-up Invasight.

Karthiga Kumar, CEO and founder of Invasight, underlines: “Cancer is a vicious disease, not only for the patients but also for their families. That’s why we at Invasight have chosen to fight cancer’s most lethal feature – its invasiveness. However, cancer therapy must not come at the expense of side effects and patients’ quality of life. Therefore, our mission is to develop advanced targeted therapies for invasive cancers that combine high efficacy with a favorable safety and toxicity profile.”

More about Invasight

01/2023 About

Thanks Co:operaid

As a venture capital investor, OCCIDENT is an enabler – our motivation is to empower visions and support the creation of great things. What the founders of our portfolio companies have in common is that they inspire others and make a positive contribution to society.

The opportunities to do this are similar around the world, but the circumstances are sometimes very different. We are there­fore delighted to have been funding educational scholarships for disadvantaged young people in Laos, Cambodia and Bangladesh for 8 years now, so that these particular talents can receive higher education and in turn change the lives of their families and their communities for the better.

Through OCCIDENT’s long-term commitment, 33 higher education courses have been completed to date to become lawyers, doctors, nurses, accountants and farmers, with 13 more to be added in the current year. The goal for 2023 is to actively support a total of 53 students and include Kenya to the program.

Many thanks to Marcel, Rashid and the entire Co:operaid team for their tireless efforts and for making this wonderful scholarship program possible!

01/2023 Team

Welcome Lars

OCCIDENT welcomes Lars Bohnert as new Investment Analyst for the life sciences sector at the Munich office. Lars studied medicine at the University of Ulm and Heidelberg with several stays abroad. He gained his first professional experience as an equity research analyst at a small and mid cap biotech fund. At OCCIDENT, Lars supports the comprehensive analysis and due diligence of new investment opportunities with his medical knowledge and understanding.

12/2022 Team

When change happens, chances appear.

The year 2022 has once again brought us many changes in various areas, has shown us that nothing can be taken for granted and that we must constantly adapt to new realities. At the same time, we were strengthened in our values and in our investment philosophy to invest courageously and visionarily in topics that change all of our lives for the better. Many thanks to all for the enriching and positive cooperation!

Both venture capital investors, and especially startup founders, are skilled at adapting to new situations and dealing with uncertainty. So we can all be quite optimistic about the future, and at the same time learn from the past that changes always offer opportunities which we can use together and bring to success.

We wish you a peaceful, inspiring Christmas season and hope to live in a more peaceful and free world again in the future and experience more unity and togetherness. Let us work together to make 2023 a year full of new chances!

12/2022 Portfolio

Follow-up investment in Resistell

OCCIDENT has been invested in Resistell since the seed financing and is now again participating in the first tranche of 8.5 million of the Series B. Together with the EIC Fund, TRUMPF Venture, Zürcher Kantonalbank, Launchpad and other private investors, the foundation is thus laid for the next successful phase of the company.

Resistell is a leading MedTech company in the field of phenotypic nanomotion technology for measuring living cells through which antibiotic resistance can be tackled. The additional funding will be used to complete clinical trials for antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) and to launch the R&D device Phenotech Research. This device shows in the first clinical study for bacteremia and sepsis an accuracy of about 95% and a massive reduction of time to result compared to the gold standard.

More information in the press release under the following link.

More about Resistell

12/2022 Team

Refining our recipe for success at the end of the year

As every year, we took the opportunity just before the end of the year to pause and continue to refine with our OCCIDENT recipe for success.

First, we looked back on our achievements in our annual review, celebrating in particular our successes such as the exit of Versantis, as well as three new and five follow-on investments. We then looked ahead in our outlook to ensure that OCCIDENT’s successes continue over the coming years.

Finally, we spiced up our recipe for success with a hefty dose of team spirit. After being introduced to the basics of Japanese cuisine by Sherly, we were able to cook our own Japanese menu and spent a fun evening full of memories of the last great years.

11/2022 About

World Antimicrobial Awareness Week

On the occasion of the WHO’s World Antimicrobial Awareness Week from November 18 to 24, we would like to highlight antibiotic resistance as one of the biggest threats to global health. WHO also calls it the “silent pandemic”.

Antibiotic resistance can affect anyone of any age and in any country, leading to higher medical costs and mortality. If antibiotics lose their effectiveness, healthcare professionals will no longer have the ability to treat bacterial infections and control these often life-threatening infections.

At OCCIDENT, we believe it is essential to give this topic a higher profile in society so as not to run the risk of this “silent pandemic” developing into a very serious one in the future. Melanie and Danuta, founders of two of our portfolio companies developing solutions for the fight against antibiotic resistance, shared their thoughts.

Melanie from Avelo points out that “antimicrobial resistance has the potential to be the next big global health problem if we don’t act now. The fight against antimicrobial resistance is of particular relevance as we can prevent millions of unnecessary deaths and billions in economic losses.”

Danuta adds that “the discovery of antibiotics marked the birth of modern medicine and trivialized once deadly microbial infections. However, we ignored the fact that antibiotic resistance develops naturally – the more antibiotics we use, the faster antibiotic resistance spreads. Without antibiotics, simple infections will lead to more deaths, child mortality will rise again, and modern medical interventions such as surgeries or cancer therapies will become impossible. That’s why we at Resistell aim to support a shift from empirical therapy to precision therapy for infectious diseases to reduce the spread of antibiotic resistance.”

Read more about the World Antimicrobial Awareness Week under the following link.

10/2022 Team

OCCIDENT Pitch Event

Thank you all for making this pitch event addressing tomorrow’s sustainability challenges such a success. Despite a currently more difficult investment environment and a generally negative investor sentiment, we can nevertheless be cautiously optimistic. Both venture capitalists and startup founders know very well how to deal with uncertainty. Moreover, investors know how to deal with startup challenges, essentially technological challenges and entrepreneurial challenges.

Quite an essential consideration behind sustainability is that an innovative new technology uses resources as efficiently as possible. However, sustainability goes beyond technology and also means a long-term orientation and a forward-looking approach to building a business. This includes a trusting partnership with both the founders and co-investors for successfully building companies and overcoming multiple challenges.

At the event, we heard many great pitches from some OCCIDENT’s portfolio companies and the Ventureleaders Cleantech winners 2022. It has been a real pleasure to intensify partnerships to address tomorrow’s challenges together!

10/2022 Portfolio

WORLD SIGHT DAY

On the occasion of World Sight Day on October 13, we would like to draw attention to the approximately 40 million blind people worldwide and the 250 million people with a visual impairment.

Max Ostermeier, CEO of our portfolio company IOP, emphasizes the importance of innovation in this area: “Glaucoma is a fatal chronic eye disease in which asymptomatic elevated intraocular pressure leads to progressive damage of the optic nerve, resulting in irreversible loss of vision and blindness in a large number of people worldwide. And as we all know, vision loss severely limits the quality of life for patients and their families and increases the risk of falling or suffering fatal accidents.

Fortunately, treatments to lower and control intraocular pressure are available to preserve patients’ vision, either through medication or surgery. But unfortunately, all of these therapies have limited effectiveness, and patients respond differently. To date, therapeutic decisions have been based on only a very few random snapshots of a patient’s eye pressure, measured during infrequent office visits, usually every 3-6 months. Because of this uncertainty, ophthalmologists can only hope to use the most effective therapy for the patient and to detect early when this is not the case or when the patient’s response to therapy changes. In addition, it also means that patients are unable to self-monitor their disease.

At Implandata, we enable ophthalmologists to provide personalized precision medicine to their patients to make disease management more efficient and empower patients to self-monitor their disease and alleviate their fear of ineffective therapies and vision loss by implementing the breakthrough EYEMATE system for reliable continuous monitoring and self-monitoring of eye pressure under normal living conditions and remote disease management. We are confident that we can prevent patient blindness and give hope to all people with glaucoma around the world.”

More about IOP

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