Female-led Swiss BioTech FluoSphera secures €1.23 million to advance animal-free, human-relevant drug discovery

Geneva-based BioTech startup FluoSphera today announced that it has raised €1.23 million (CHF 1.15 million) in funding to make drug discovery faster, safer, and more human-relevant with its patented multi-tissue platform. 

The round was led by Soulmates Ventures and a Swiss business angel, with participation from IndieBio New York. The startup will use the funding to scale commercial collaborations, grow its business development team, and expand its AI and automation capabilities for large-scale imaging analysis.

“We’re building the next generation of preclinical tools, not just to get new medicine faster to market and at a lower cost, but also to enhance the quality of drug discovery processes. By improving human relevance and reducing reliance on animal models, we help our partners bring safer, more effective treatments to patients faster,” said Dr Clélia Bourgoint, CEO and co-founder of FluoSphera.

Founded by Dr Bourgoint and Gregory Segala, FluoSphera is a spin-off from the University of Geneva that provides a suite of systemic, in vitro drug discovery solutions. Citing Deloitte’s 2023 Pharmaceutical Innovation Report, the company stated that developing a new drug takes on average 10 to 15 years and costs between $2 and $3 billion (€1.7 and €2.57 billion). 

According to the company, despite these massive investments, over 90% of drug candidates still fail in clinical trials, with oncology programmes reporting success rates below 5%. FluoSphera attributed most of these failures to the fact that preclinical models cannot accurately predict how compounds behave in the human body. “Traditional 2D cell cultures can’t model organ interactions, and animal models fail to fully recapitulate human biology. As a result, key toxicities are often missed, leading to wasted time, sunk R&D costs, and delayed access to life-saving treatments,” it explained.

To address these limitations, the company has developed a multiplexed in-vitro platform that predicts drug effects in a human-like way, allowing drug developers to identify the most promising molecules earlier. 

Explaining its key differentiator, FluoSphera mentioned that, unlike traditional methods that test tissues in isolation or rely on complex organ-on-chip systems, its patented platform combines up to six or seven human tissue models in a single well, using proprietary fluorescent coding to track each one independently. 

The platform thereby enables researchers to observe how different organs interact and help them evaluate both efficacy and potential side effects in a single experiment, before animal or human testing. 

The company claimed that by reducing developmental risks and clinical and time-to-market costs, it helps drug developers achieve estimated savings of between $100 million and $500 million (€85.5 million to €428.1 million) per molecule.

The platform also helps developers align with evolving regulations, such as the FDA’s Modernisation Act 3.0, a proposed U.S.framework that encourages non-animal testing by validating New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) for preclinical research. 

“As the pharmaceutical industry transitions away from animal testing, the need for reliable human-relevant models is immense. FluoSphera is opening a multi-billion-dollar opportunity by giving drug developers the means to innovate faster, safer, and more ethically. It represents a completely new approach to developing the next generation of medicines,” said Hynek Sochor, founder and Managing Partner, Soulmates Ventures. 

With this new funding, FluoSphera aims to strengthen its business development efforts to scale commercial activities with pharmaceutical companies and CROs, expand platform integration into drug development pipelines, and further develop its AI-based image analysis capabilities. It will also focus on scaling in the US and EU, as it takes initial steps towards entering the Asian market. 

Looking ahead, FluoSphera stated that it aims to broaden access to advanced human tissue modelling. Its long-term ambition includes bringing precision medicine closer to reality by tailoring drug testing to different population subgroups.

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