Bonnier Ventures invests in cancer diagnostics firm Elypta – Med-Tech Innovation

Bonnier Ventures has become a minority owner in the Swedish diagnostics company Elypta. The company focuses on developing technology that uses liquid biopsies to detect early-stage cancer.

“We believe Elypta has huge potential to improve healthcare,” says Sofia Hasselberg, investment director at Bonnier Ventures.

Bonnier Ventures’ acquisition of a significant minority stake in Elypta is in line with its investment priority areas of healthtech and precision medicine.

Elypta was founded in 2017 to develop the world’s first blood- and urine-test technology based on human metabolic biomarkers, for early detection and more frequent follow-up of cancer.

Sofia Hasselberg of Bonnier Ventures, said: “Bonnier Ventures is proud to support Elypta’s strong team in their continued work. Through scientific innovation and software development, Elypta contributes to solving one of healthcare’s major challenges: reducing cancer mortality. The technology Elypta is developing is unique and enables the detection of many cancers before symptoms start to appear. In addition, Elypta’s technology does this in a cost-effective way that we have not seen before in the global healthcare market.”

The financing round for Elypta was led by Bonnier Ventures, in which existing shareholders Navigare Ventures, Industrifonden, Hillclimber, Norrsken VC, Nina Capital and Chalmers Ventures, among others, also participated.

Elypta will use the capital to develop and validate blood and urine tests for Multi-Cancer Early Detection (MCED) in adults with no symptoms of cancer and for detection of recurrence in kidney cancer patients.

Karl Bergman, CEO of Elypta, said: “We are delighted to now have Bonnier Ventures among our owners. They are a financially strong, long-term investor adding significant networks and industry expertise to Elypta.

“Our MCED test has the potential to greatly improve the share of cancers detected at the earliest stages when treatment is more effective as well as less costly. Detecting Stage I cancer has been a particular challenge for DNA-based tests, and this is where metabolism-based biomarkers could really make a difference.”