The company, also known as CreatSens Health, has raised 1,000,000 euros through public and private investment

The URV spin-off company Renalyse, also known as CreatSens Health, has successfully completed a €1,000,000 investment round led by the Mind the Gap II fund and GENESIS Ventures, with the participation of the Eurostars programme. This important injection of funds will allow it to industrialise and certify its device for diagnosing and monitoring chronic kidney disease.

The Universitat Rovira i Virgili’s spin-off company was created in 2017 with the aim of developing a medical device to improve the treatment of kidney disease. The funding awarded will allow Renalyse to certify its in vitro diagnostic product so that it can be on the market by 2026. This device, also called Renalyse, will be able to remotely measure three key parameters for patients with chronic kidney disease. In the European Union alone, over 90,000,000 people suffer from the disease.

The project will allow patients to measure these parameters themselves and receive immediate care if serious problems arise at home. These markers can prevent conditions such as arrhythmias, anaemia, severe deficiencies and even cardiopulmonary diseases.

The investment round is led by Mind the Gap, the Botín Foundation’s programme to promote biotech entrepreneurship, which operates through a co-investment vehicle involving a group of private investors and the Foundation. Since it was set up in 2010, Mind the Gap has invested more than 6,000,000 euros in start-up projects and already has a portfolio of nine companies, which in 2022 employed more than 145 people, most of whom were highly qualified, and had a combined turnover of more than 7,000,000 euros. Mind the Gap has committed to invest 500,000 euros in Renalyse. “This investment in Renalyse reinforces the Botín Foundation’s commitment to Spanish entrepreneurs who are working in biomedical innovation with a high impact on health and social care. Our obligation is to continue looking for new ways to transform talent into wealth; that is why we work to ensure that the discoveries of our scientists are converted into products, services and technologies that generate economic and social development,” says Íñigo Sáenz de Miera, director general of the Botín Foundation.

The company emerged as a spin-off from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) with the support of the Centre for Technology Transfer and Innovation (CTTI), which was responsible for advising researchers on contracts and projects, raising awareness in the university community about protecting technologies, monitoring RDI activity, and managing the creation of spin-off companies as a direct way for researchers and students to exploit the technologies and knowledge generated by universities.

GENESIS Ventures, an investment vehicle managed by the consulting firm GENESIS Biomed set up in 2017 for a total of 2,500,000 euros, also takes part in this operation, the objective of which is to invest tickets of 25,000 to 100,000 euros in early-stage projects in the biomedical sector. It invested a total of 100,000 euros in Renalyse. According to Josep Lluís Falcó, director of GENESIS Ventures and co-founder and CEO of GENESIS Biomed, “Renalyse is one of the great hopes of our portfolio of investee companies, because the diagnostic device it is developing will change how patients with chronic renal failure are treated. Moreover, the fact that the Botín Foundation is joining the project alongside such institutions as Hospital Clínic and BStartup Health, confirms that Renalyse is a sure thing. We are very excited to join the company’s board of directors.”

Now in the pre-industrialisation phase, this project will commercialise a personal care platform, which can be used by both patients at home and doctors in primary care practices. Currently, these parameters are monitored through blood tests in clinical laboratories or with devices used by specialists in hospital emergency departments. Renalyse’s value proposition is a more cost-effective device that provides immediate results, so that patients can monitor their disease from home, without being experts.

Also noteworthy is the contribution to Renalyse made by Eurostars, a European collaboration programme between companies designed to support innovative SMEs and their partners by funding their innovative international R&D projects. The selected collaborative projects aim to create a new product, process or service that can be rapidly commercialised, and it is precisely for this purpose that the project led by Renalyse, together with its Polish partner Medapp, has been funded with 1 million euros so that they can jointly develop the Renalyse platform.

RENALYSE is the registered trade name of CreatSens Health S.L., a biotechnology company that focuses on the development of medical platforms and devices to improve the quality of life of patients by monitoring various biochemical parameters.