Companies
Weilos is a safe community for people to share their fitness updates to inspire others and receive support. Users view real body transformations and healthy photo updates from other dieters on a streaming newsfeed. They can then post themselves to receive support and tips from other like minded people. The app also has a special camera tool so users can take perfectly lined up progress photos to visualize their smallest improvements.
Wink Health is a simple and effective way to get treatment for sleep apnea online. About 90% of people with sleep apnea go untreated. Our goal is to remove the barriers to getting diagnosed and receiving treatment. We do this through a combination of a smartphone app that 'listens' for sleep apnea risk, telehealth consultations with doctors, and treatments shipped to people's homes.
Wyndly (https://www.wyndly.com) fixes allergies by training patients' bodies to ignore their allergy triggers. Frustrated allergy suffers come to us when they no longer want to deal with pills and sprays. We diagnose the patient’s unique allergy profile and create a personalized treatment plan to give the patient lifelong allergy relief. Specifically, Wyndly is increasing access to sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) for allergy care. For our patients, we're combining the convenience of telehealth and direct-to-consumer care with an exceptional patient experience that never loses the context of care. Wyndly represents an opportunity to change allergy care forever. With 60 million Americans suffering from allergies today, and with this number doubling over the coming years, there's simply an incredible need for the convenient care Wyndly provides. You can read more about us in [Techcrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/12/wyndly-aims-to-bring-allergy-drops-to-the-masses/). The Wyndly Model At Wyndly, we believe that better connections lead to better care, and we’re committed to making both happen at every step of the patient journey. Our allergy practice allows our patients to work with expert providers to develop personalized treatment plans for long-term allergy relief using clinically proven therapies. From a patient’s initial consultation to their final treatment delivery, we want the Wyndly experience to be a breath of fresh air for allergy sufferers – truly effective allergy relief, simply and efficiently delivered. Once we've conquered allergies, we're transforming the care model for every chronic condition. While transactional care for purchasing pills has flourished in telehealth, no one has gone after chronic care. Patients with chronic conditions are shuffled between providers, insurance, and more -- and they never feel heard. These patients deserve better, and we're going to give it to them. Wyndly is starting with allergies, but we'll expand into asthma, sleep apnea, and other conditions in the near future. Our values **Compassion**: We approach all our patients and partners with an open mind and a genuine desire to be of service. **Focus**: We do a few things very well, and are always clear about our boundaries and direction of travel. **Courage**: We embrace ambiguity and discomfort because we know that’s how we grow. **Progress**: We make something better every single day. *It boils down to empathy and forward momentum in everything we do.* The team Wyndly is proudly backed by Y Combinator and a leading group of angel investors and VCs. The founders are Dr. Manan Shah (Chief Medical Officer), an ear-nose-and-throat surgeon who’s a leading practitioner of telehealth in his specialty, and his cousin Aakash Shah (CEO), who led growth engineering at SparkGift (acquired by Stockpile in 2016) and Parse.ly (acquired by Automattic in 2021).
X-ZELL™ is a global start-up specialising in rare cell detection technology. Backed by Y Combinator and various high-profile angel investors from around the globe – among them Gmail creator Paul Buchheit – X-ZELL™ has developed a world-first platform technology capable of isolating and visualizing rare and abnormal cells such as Circulating Endothelial Cells (CEC). X-ZELL™’s platform technology is based on four core modules covering the entire spectrum from blood processing through to cell analysis and reporting – with every step performed in-house using patented and proprietary technology. By combining the wisdom of 4,000 years of pathologic research with X-ZELL™’s own, cutting-edge technology, X-ZELL™ ensures robust results and maximum clinical utility across a broad range of medical applications – from research through to medication management, companions diagnostics, relapse control and diagnostic decision-making. More information on www.x-zell.com and @XZELLInc
At XGenomes, we are building a technology comprising novel biochemistry, hardware and algorithms for sequencing DNA. Our product will be streamlined: there is zero library preparation; we sequence directly on unadulterated single molecules of DNA; DNA extraction will be integrated with sequencing; there is no bioinformatics bottleneck. The sequence we produce will be of unprecedented accuracy due to several layers of in-built redundancy including the sequencing both strands of the double-helix concurrently. The sequence we produce will be complete, encompassing: structural as well as single nucleotide variants; long-range haplotype phase; the repetitive "dark matter" of the genome. The cost of goods (consumables) of sequencing will be <$10, which will allow us to price our product at a level that will help grow the market while still achieving >90% margin. We will start by offering access as a service to high value customers, which be followed by a razor and blade model of selling instruments and consumables.
Yemaachi Biotech is diversifying and expanding access to precision cancer diagnostics and therapeutics by collecting and sequencing samples from all across Africa, which is the most genetically diverse population on the planet. We then use this data to either optimize existing diagnostic tests, or help other companies discover new ones. With our research activities based in Africa, we are able to leverage access to the most genetically diverse population on the planet to build a first-of-its-kind clinical and molecular knowledgebase on cancer among African people.
YourChoice Therapeutics is revolutionizing the global contraceptive market. Our vision is to develop non-hormonal contraceptives to provide both women and men with birth control options that lack the associated risks of hormone-based options but are equally effective. Traditionally, it has been the women’s financial and health burden to have a contraceptive in place. Our first goal is therefore to bring a novel non-hormonal, on-demand and low cost female contraceptive to the market that will substantially improve their quality of life and well-being. Our second goal is to develop the first ever non-surgical and highly effective non-hormonal contraceptive for men. Currently, male contraception is limited to two main options – vasectomy or condoms. Having such options available to both women and men will globally allow for much better family planning, reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies including abortions and therefore reduce costs and ensure contraceptive health and well-being.
ZBiotics is a synthetic biology company founded in 2016 and headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company bioengineers probiotic bacteria for nutraceutical and other applications. They launched the world's first genetically engineered probiotic in 2019 – a probiotic that breaks down a toxic byproduct of alcohol. They are currently developing a pipeline of additional engineered probiotics for other consumer health applications.
Zealth is building remote monitoring software to help hospitals provide automated continuous round-the-clock support to their cancer patients post-discharge. Hospitals are overburdened with no resources to provide care to their chronic patients once they leave the hospital. For instance, in India, there are only 2200 oncologists for 1.38 billion people. Patients travel 100 miles waiting for hours to get few minutes with the doctors. They have no easy means to manage all the toxicities and symptoms they get once they are back home. This leads to 6X lower patient retention, 4X high emergency readmissions, and poor patient outcomes. Zealth bridges this gap through its digital health intervention platform.
Zeit Medical leverages the power of AI and wearable sensors to deliver peace of mind for those affected by stroke. Zeit’s smart headband immediately detects the onset of stroke and notifies 911. Each year more than 90% of the one million strokes in the US go untreated, resulting in life-long disability and exploding medical costs north of $100b. The lack of timely treatment is the result of delays in alerting the emergency services. More than 10 million Americans with an elevated stroke risk live with constant fear that a stroke may go unnoticed for hours, while they are asleep or alone. The company was founded by Orestis Vardoulis PhD a biomedical & mechanical engineer and expert in digital health (EPFL/Stanford) and Urs Naber MD a critical care physician (Dartmouth/Stanford). They have both seen the devastating effects of stroke in their families and came up with the idea of addressing this unmet clinical need during their Stanford Biodesign Innovation Fellowship.
Forty million men in the US and over 500 million worldwide suffer from urinary obstruction related to benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). The majority of men will experience symptoms of this disease at some point in life. BPH, also known as prostate enlargement, leads to urinary straining, frequency, urgency, and sleep disruption. Despite the high prevalence and significant quality of life burden of BPH, established treatments are limited to drugs, which have limited effectiveness, and surgery, which carries a high risk of sexual side effects. The Zenflow Spring is a small implant delivered in the urologist's office in a simple procedure that provides quick and long-lasting symptom relief.
b-12 is an AI copilot that plans how to create and test new molecules for chemists. We're like a GPS for chemistry, helping pharma companies plan the recipes for new drugs, accelerating early-stage drug discovery from years to months. Andres built the first AI agent that can autonomously think and make molecules in a robotic lab, published in Nature Machine Intelligence (750+ citations), and won the best paper award at the NeurIPS AI for Science conference. Zlatko is a 3x National Chemistry Olympiad champion, competed at IChO level, and medicinal chemist who has worked at Roche and leading lab robotics companies. He has an extensive network of hundreds of chemists across Europe. We are publishing a groundbreaking paper in Nature demonstrating our AI's ability to optimally plan chemical recipes. We run paid pilots with big pharma companies showing that our platform planned a set of experiments that achieved full conversion in a single attempt, eliminating the usual 8-12 iteration cycle.
At dNovo, we are curing hair loss by creating new hair, de novo. We are doing this with cellular reprogramming technology that we pioneered at Stanford and Harvard. With this technology, we can take any patient derived cell, whether it be blood, skin or fat and reprogram (convert) them into medically relevant cell types. Our first objective is to cure hair loss by using our reprogramming technology to make new hair (patent pending). This is different from everything currently available on the market because the hair loss industry is focused on maintaining the hair that you already have, but no one is trying to produce NEW hair, de novo. After hair, we envision using our cellular reprogramming technique to make any cell, any tissue or any organ on demand to replace what is lost as we age.
The iSono Health platform combines automated 3D ultrasound technology with cloud computation and artificial intelligence to empower women and their physicians with early detection and monitoring of breast cancer. Our patented compact ultrasound scanner captures 3D images through automatic scanning of whole breast volume in 1 min. The device connects to a smartphone/tablet/laptop and is controlled by our mobile app. The data is transferred to a secure cloud for image processing and storage. Our machine learning algorithm uses acoustic biomarkers to identify abnormal masses. Our platform’s automated operation and software expands ultrasound use in point-of-care diagnostics as well as monitoring of breast health at home, walk-in and mobile clinics. iSono Health offers women and healthcare providers : Safety: No Radiation Actionable Feedback with AI Fast: 2min Scan Easy to Use
We're building Quinn at iollo, an AI scientist that analyzes multimodal biological data (multi-omics, imaging, etc.) to discover new biology in hours, work that typically takes teams of scientists years. Quinn translates these discoveries into accelerated development of novel therapeutic strategies and interventions for extending healthspan.
We’re building the AI workforce for healthcare clinics, starting with mental health. Our AI Admissions Coordinator, Sarah, manages the first patient touchpoint via phone, text, or referrals. Available 24/7, she responds instantly and increases new patient bookings by up to 30%. Our AI Clinical Assistant, Emma, automates the paperwork and administrative tasks before, during, and after each session, so clinicians can focus fully on patient care.