FIT awards 5 new Tech Grants to projects from CHUV, EPFL and HEIG-VD

Five projects have received support from the Foundation for Innovation and Technology (FIT) in the form of CHF 100’000 Tech Grants: PreciMune and Tamaro Bioscience from CHUV, Germion Therapeutics and Obstetrical Care Solutions from EPFL, and Battery as a Service (BaaS) from HEIG-VD will be able to continue developing their technologies with the backing of the Foundation.

PreciMune delivers superior immune profiling and speed precision therapies
Developed at UNIL-CHUV with the support of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, PreciMune is advancing the commercialization of a proprietary platform that delivers highly sensitive and comprehensive immune repertoire analysis. As immune profiling becomes essential for understanding disease, guiding precision medicine, and developing new therapies, PreciMune offers unmatched resolution with real-world usability. Researchers gain deeper, more cost-effective insights, while clinicians can better select patients for advanced therapies (e.g., personalized form of cancer immunotherapies), monitor treatment responses earlier, and reduce waste and toxicity.
 
The FIT-InnoTREK grant will support Dr Johanna Chiffelle in productizing and deploying the technology and securing the first customers, accelerating the platform’s impact across multiple precision medicine markets.
 


Tamaro Bioscience: ‘off-the-shelf’ CAR T-cell therapies to fight cancer
In the fight against cancer, one proven strategy to re-activate an immune response against cancer cells consists in inserting a synthetic chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) in patients’ T-cells (immune cells). This gene-modification is typically performed ex vivo, using man-made synthetic (artificial) proteins. Once reinfused in patients, CAR T-cells trigger an immune response and selectively kill cancer cells. While they have transformed treatment of blood cancers, broad impact is limited by patient-specific manufacturing (1 batch = 1 patient).
 
The UNIL-CHUV spin-off Tamaro Bioscience shifts the paradigm by modifying T-cells from healthy donors, instead of each patients’ cells and thereby enables to treat 100+ unrelated patients from 1 production batch. It enables simultaneous insertion of a CAR and removal of immune rejection genes to avoid CAR T-cell rejection in unrelated patients, thus creating an affordable, and scalable ‘off-the-shelf’ product for on demand treatment.
 
With the FIT-InnoTREK grant, Dr Jimmy Maillard will lead fundraising and strategic development, prepare freedom-to-operate and regulatory documents, plan clinical trial activities, and develop commercialization strategies.
 


Germion Therapeutics: a new class of antibiotics to outsmart resistant bacteria
Antimicrobial resistance threatens to cause 10 million deaths annually by 2050. Current antibiotics are failing, and few new classes have reached the clinic for decades. Active development either focuses on optimisation of the already-available scaffolds (susceptible to resistance due to the share mechanisms) or in complex and expensive solutions (e.g. phage therapy).
 
Stemming out of EPFL, and with the support of an international team of collaborators, Germion’s solution addresses this urgent and rising need by developing a simple and novel class of metalloid-based antibiotics in an unexplored chemical space, and that display a unique mechanism of action, offering an alternative where current therapies are failing.
 
The FIT-Innogrant will support Dr Jan Romano-deGea’s efforts towards in vivo de-risking, the development of a second-generation of antibiotics with activity against Gram-negative pathogens, and the creation of clinical, regulatory and IP roadmaps, paving the way for startup incorporation and investor readiness.
 


Obstetrical Care Solutions (OCS) brings real-time 3D visualization to safer, smarter childbirth
For decades, birth assistance has relied mainly on manual examination and the practitioner’s mental reconstruction of maternal and foetal anatomy. Although ultrasound is now standard in delivery rooms, it offers only limited, cross-sectional views.
 
OCS introduces a real-time 3D visualization system for assessment of childbirth biomechanics. This technology displays the pelvic bone, foetal head and, when relevant, obstetric instruments, providing a standardized framework for navigating complex deliveries and improving clinical consistency and patient care. Developed at EPFL and CHUV, the add-on to ultrasound devices integrates an optical tracking system with AI-driven 3D modelling and can incorporate tracked tools for guided procedures.
 
With the FIT-Innogrant, Dr Sandra Marcadent and Dr Johann Hêches will refine the prototype, conduct pre-clinical studies to confirm the new prototype quality, and lead fundraising to advance toward clinical trials.
 


Battery as a service (BaaS): a battery platform to cut imbalance costs and boost grid flexibility
In the context of massive integration of intermittent solar energy into the Swiss electric grid and it impact on the energy imbalance penalties, the Battery-as-a-Service (BaaS) spin-off from HEIG-VD has been awarded the FIT Tech Grant to build a new digital platform for flexibility procurement for small and mid-size electricity providers (balance groups) to mitigate these penalties. It virtualizes large scale battery energy storage systems (BESS), enabling balance groups to “rent” on-demand energy storage and reduce energy imbalance penalties by 25–30% by direct control over the rented batteries through APIs.
 
Using advanced algorithms for dynamic pricing, optimized capacity planning and invoicing, the spin-off provides an end2end solution and facilitates the access to battery assets. By connecting multiple battery sites and offering short-term contracts, BaaS creates a decentralized flexibility marketplace that benefits both energy providers (no initial investment) as well as battery site investors (maximizes asset use and revenue diversification).
 
With FIT’s support, the project will deliver a full-scale prototype including 2 laboratory batteries at HEIG-VD, advancing Switzerland toward a more resilient, data-driven, and sustainable energy system.

➡️ Source: FIT | 📸 ©Obstetrical Care Solutions