Berlin — Aigno­stics, a spin-off of Charité — Univer­si­täts­me­di­zin Berlin and the Berlin Insti­tute of Health (BIH) that deve­lops AI-based solu­ti­ons for patho­logy, today announ­ced the closing of a €5m seed funding. Böhrin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund (BIVF) acted as lead inves­tor, with parti­ci­pa­tion from High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF), the VC Fonds Tech­no­lo­gie of IBB Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft, and Future Capital.

Formally, the deve­lo­p­ment of Aigno­stics began in early 2018 when rese­ar­chers from Charité and TU Berlin were accepted into BIH’s Digi­tal Health Acce­le­ra­tor (DHA) program to further deve­lop their inno­va­tive rese­arch in AI-based patho­logy and “Explainable AI” into a spin-off company.

Howe­ver, the foun­da­tion for Aigno­stics was laid much earlier, by Prof. Frede­rick Klau­schen, deputy. Direc­tor of the Insti­tute of Patho­logy at Charité, and rese­ar­chers from the Fraun­ho­fer Gesell­schaft and TU Berlin, led by Prof. Klaus-Robert Müller, Direc­tor of the Berlin Center for Machine Lear­ning (BZML), who filed their first patent for AI-based patho­logy back in 2011. Prof. Klau­schen, who studied physics as well as medi­cine, reco­gni­zed the poten­tial of AI for patho­logy early on. “While patho­lo­gists are excel­lent at compre­hen­si­vely analy­zing the morpho­lo­gi­cal features of tissues in indi­vi­dual samples, AI is parti­cu­larly well-suited for evalua­ting indi­vi­dual features in a stan­dar­di­zed and quan­ti­ta­tive manner, as well as unco­ve­ring corre­la­ti­ons in larger data­sets, such as clini­cal trials,” explains Prof. Klauschen.

Aigno­stics’ proprie­tary “Explainable AI” plat­form is parti­cu­larly well suited for such unco­ve­ring of new contexts. It is based on rese­arch by the Fraun­ho­fer Gesell­schaft, Charité and TU Berlin and allows to over­come the often criti­ci­zed “black box” problem of AI in patho­logy. “Explainable AI is a new and exci­ting field in modern AI rese­arch with a lot of poten­tial for both acade­mia and indus­try,” said Prof. Müller. “For exam­ple, we can train our AI with tissue samples that have a posi­tive or nega­tive response to therapy. We can then have the AI graphi­cally “explain” to us which morpho­lo­gi­cal charac­te­ristics distin­gu­ish the posi­tive cases from the nega­tive cases,” Dr. Maxi­mi­lian Alber, CTO of Aigno­stics, explains further. “This tech­no­logy is not only essen­tial for routine diagno­stics, where it can help verify the func­tio­ning of AI appli­ca­ti­ons, but is also a very inte­res­t­ing approach to find poten­tial new biomar­kers that can predict therapy response,” adds Prof. Klauschen.

“What makes us unique, howe­ver, is not only our tech­no­logy, but also our orga­niza­tio­nal struc­ture. We have exten­sive access to multi­mo­dal data as well as patho­lo­gists, which allows us to deve­lop tail­o­red algo­rithms for a wide variety of issues, from diagno­stics to rese­arch to CDx. In addi­tion, our close networ­king with Charité and TU Berlin is a great advan­tage, as we deve­lop our appli­ca­ti­ons in constant exch­ange with compu­ter scien­tists, rese­ar­chers, as well as patho­lo­gists as “end users”,” explains Viktor Matyas, CEO of Aigno­stics. “We are also very grateful for the support of Charité, BIH and Ascen­ion, without which we would not have come this far,” Matyas continues.

Aigno­stics will use the finan­cing to expand its port­fo­lio in phar­maceu­ti­cal rese­arch as well as fund longer-term projects aimed at deve­lo­ping companion/complementary diagno­stics (CDx) for routine diagno­stics. “We find Aigno­stics’ approach very promi­sing and think that more speci­fic diagno­stics will enable more perso­na­li­zed, effec­tive treat­ment for pati­ents,” said Dr. Alex­an­der Ehlgen of BIVF.

About Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund GmbH
The Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund (BIVF) supports early-stage rese­arch and tech­no­lo­gies through stra­te­gic invest­ments. Led by Frank Kalk­bren­ner, Global Head of the Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund. With a volume of €300 million, the BIVF invests in biotech and start-up compa­nies that have the poten­tial to deve­lop breakth­rough tech­no­lo­gies. The BIVF port­fo­lio curr­ently consists of 34 compa­nies. In addi­tion, the BIVF supports the crea­tion of new compa­nies based on promi­sing rese­arch projects at univer­si­ties or acade­mic insti­tu­ti­ons. The BIVF’s inte­rest in young, tech­­no­­logy-orien­­ted compa­nies reflects its commit­ment to promo­ting inno­va­tive ideas and new scien­ti­fic approa­ches. The BIVF thus crea­tes oppor­tu­ni­ties for Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim to expand into new busi­ness areas with a focus on onco­logy, rege­ne­ra­tive medi­cine, infec­tious dise­a­ses and digi­tal health. www.boehringer-ingelheim-venture.com

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial. With a volume of around EUR 900 million spread across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has supported almost 600 start-ups since 2005. His team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and start-up experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups from the fields of digi­tal busi­ness models, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces, chemis­try and rela­ted busi­ness areas. More than €2.5 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 1,600 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 100 companies.
Inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Energy, KfW Capi­tal, the Fraun­ho­­fer-Gesel­l­­schaft and the 32 companies.

About Future Capital
Future Capi­tal (www.future-capital.com) is a public-private part­ner­ship between the state of Hesse and Sanofi-Aven­­tis Deutsch­land GmbH. Since 1999, we have been support­ing early-stage and start-up compa­nies in the health­care sector with capi­tal, network and know-how. The company is head­quar­te­red in Frank­furt and we invest in our region, but also in Germany and Europe.

About IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft
IBB Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft(www.ibb-bet.de) provi­des venture capi­tal to inno­va­tive Berlin-based compa­nies and has estab­lished itself as the market leader in early stage finan­cing in Berlin. The funds are prima­rily used for the deve­lo­p­ment and market launch of inno­va­tive products or services and for busi­ness concepts in the crea­tive indus­tries. Since March 2015, two funds mana­ged by IBB Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft are in the invest­ment phase, the VC Fonds Tech­no­lo­gie Berlin II with a fund volume of EUR 60 million and the VC Fonds Krea­­tiv-Wirt­­schaft Berlin II with a fund volume of EUR 40 million. Both VC funds are finan­ced by funds from Inves­ti­ti­ons­bank Berlin (IBB) and the Euro­pean Regio­nal Deve­lo­p­ment Fund (ERDF), mana­ged by the State of Berlin. Since 1997, IBB Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft has provi­ded appro­xi­m­ately EUR 1.52 billion to over 210 Berlin-based crea­tive and tech­no­logy compa­nies in consor­tia with part­ners, of which IBB Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft has inves­ted EUR 217 million as lead, co-lead or co-investor.

About Ascen­ion
Ascen­ion GmbH (www.ascenion.de) is an inde­pen­dent tech­no­logy trans­fer company with parti­cu­lar exper­tise in the life scien­ces. It is a part­ner of more than 30 rese­arch insti­tu­ti­ons, univer­si­ties and univer­sity hospi­tals in Germany and Europe. Parti­cu­lar strengths are the support of spin-offs and project deve­lo­p­ment. As a tech­no­logy trans­fer part­ner of BIH and Charité, Ascen­ion accom­pa­nied the foun­ders and scien­tists and helped to launch the spin-off toge­ther with the BIH-Digi­­tal Health Acce­le­ra­tor. In close coor­di­na­tion with BIH, Ascen­ion accom­pa­nied the nego­tia­tion of essen­tial contracts on the way to the foun­da­tion and finan­cing. www.ascenion.de