Innovate & Elevate

Greetings and welcome back to the Springboard Corner, where we showcase and spotlight the latest achievements from life science and hi-tech startups that have been part of Connect’s Springboard program.

Congratulations to the Entire DTx Team!

DTx Pharma had a big announcement last month after being acquired by pharma giant Novartis. A leader in developing novel RNA-based therapeutics using their proprietary drug delivery platform FALCON™ (Fatty Acid Ligand Conjugated OligoNucleotides), the company will receive $500M plus an additional $500M upon completion of pre-determined milestones.

Company Updates & Milestones

AivoCode – founded in 2016, AivoCode is a biotech company developing innovative therapies to treat various neurological diseases. A spinout from the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, the company was recently awarded a $2.5M SBIR Ph-2 grant from the National Institutes of Health National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NIH-NINDS). The funding will be used to further advance the development of their novel peptide for the potential treatment of traumatic brain injury.

Dermtech – a global leader in precision medicine diagnostics for early detection of skin cancers using their non-invasive DermTech Melanoma Test (DMT), continues to add new insurance payers around the country to cover this test for their members. Most recently, Highmark Inc., one of the largest Blues plans in the U.S., signed on. This brings the total covered lives to 133 million.

NanoCellect Biomedical – a leader in cell analysis and sorting solutions using microfluidics, they recently closed a $28.9M, later VC-stage funding round, to continue to grow and scale their product line.

ShadowBox – an innovator in developing a cloud-based workflow automation platform for healthcare providers, the company recently achieved System and Organization Control (SOC) 2 Type II compliance. SOC 2 is an information security standard developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). Receiving this independent validation further highlights the high level of security and privacy controls embedded in their platform.

Welby Health – a digital health company which has developed an automated care management platform for physician practices to effectively manage patients, recently announced an agreement with Athena Health, through the company’s athenahealth® Marketplace Program. By joining this program, the Welby Health platform becomes available to all providers and medical groups within the athenahealth network.