The Sabadell Asabys fund and the Werfen diagnostic equipment group have led a round of 17 million euros in DeepUll, a company created by the former founders of Stat-Dx, Jordi Carrera and Rafel Bru, which is developing a device to diagnose sepsis early.
Josep Lluís Sanfeliu, the Asabys partner who designed the investment and who will now join the board, explained that the company Alta Life Sciences, Axis Participaciones Empresariales and UI Investissement, a manager that invests in advised health, will also join in this round by the BioMérieux group, one of the largest diagnostic equipment companies in Europe.
DeepUll is developing affordable, culture-free diagnostic solutions to identify sepsis and other acute infections within hours. Its use would drastically improve the prognosis of patients, in addition to reducing healthcare costs because sepsis usually requires long hospital stays. “The test makes it possible to identify the cause of the infection and give a specific antibiotic treatment and also personalize the dose,” says Sanfeliu. The DeepUll platform can also be useful for other infectious diseases, “a therapeutic area that after covid we have once again found to be essential and needs more innovation.”
The founders of DeepUll, in addition, have already created Stat-Dx, a firm that developed the PCR technology that has become widespread to detect covid, and successfully sold it to Qiagen, in 2018. “Their trajectory, as serial entrepreneurs, gives confidence to investors”, acknowledges Sanfeliu, and it is one of the factors that explains why two large industrial groups in the diagnostic equipment sector have approached the project.
DeepUll is the first investment of Sabadell Asabys Healthcare Innovation Investments II, the second fund launched by Asabys, the manager founded by Josep Lluís Sanfeliu and Clara Campàs and owned by Alantra. A few days ago the fund made its first closing, of 100 million euros, and expects to reach 200 by the end of the year.
DeepUll has assembled a team of world-renowned experts to create fast and affordable diagnostic solutions. The Sepsis product is designed to detect more than 250 different pathogens and 15 resistance genes and give results in about eight hours, without the need for a positive blood culture. The product will be a desktop device, automated from end to end, which can be in any health center (laboratory, emergency room or ICU).
