MindMaze Therapeutics Holding SA, a Lausanne-based global leader in scalable precision neurotherapeutics, announces it has entered into a definitive agreement for a CHF 8.0 million equity financing with Neuro.io Group SA, through which Neuro.io will acquire a strategic equity position in the company. The proceeds will support the company’s commercial priorities, including scaling its U.S. footprint and advancing deployment of its neurotherapeutics solutions.

“This financing meaningfully strengthens our financial position and supports continued execution of our commercial and strategic priorities as we scale deployment of our neurotherapeutics solutions,” said Zach Henderson, Chief Executive Officer of MindMaze Therapeutics. “We are also pleased to initiate partnership discussions with Neuro.io around expanding our AI capabilities.”

The financing is expected to close in two tranches. The initial CHF 4.0 million tranche will close this week and consists of the purchase of 4,970,000 treasury shares and the subscription for CHF 2,850,900 of mandatory convertible loan notes. A second tranche consisting of an additional CHF 4.0 million of mandatory convertible loan notes has been irrevocably committed by Neuro.io and is expected to close within the following five weeks, subject to customary closing conditions. The sale and conversion prices will be determined today and set at the lower of CHF 0.23 per share and a 10% discount to the average trading price of the Company’s shares on the SIX Swiss Exchange today. Based on the pricing parameters of the transaction, aggregate gross cash proceeds to the Company are expected to amount to CHF 8.0 million, and the mandatory convertible loan notes are expected to subsequently convert into 29,786,521 ordinary shares within the following twelve months.

Concurrently with the financing, MindMaze Therapeutics and Neuro.io entered into a letter of intent to explore a range of strategic opportunities between the parties, including a potential business combination. The discussions are expected to focus on opportunities to combine MindMaze Therapeutics’ clinically validated neurotherapeutics platform with Neuro.io’s healthcare-focused AI and compute capabilities to support the development and deployment of AI-enabled interventions targeting neurological disorders.

About Neuro.io

Neuro.io is an AI hyperscaler optimized for frontier reasoning and high-value agentic applications—healthcare-first by design, multi-domain by architecture. Neuro.io enables healthcare enterprises to build, validate, and scale AI solutions from discovery to delivery, uniting compute, data, governance and validation into one integrated platform. Unlike general-purpose hyperscalers, Neuro.io’s architecture delivers sovereign data control, high performance for agentic AI, and an industry-extensible design, enabling healthcare and enterprise-grade agentic workloads to run efficiently and with predictable economics.

About MindMaze Therapeutics

MindMaze Therapeutics is a global leader in scalable, precision neurotherapeutics, dedicated to redefining the recovery trajectory for patients around the world. By integrating advanced software, proprietary sensors, and AI-driven data analytics, MindMaze Therapeutics provides a seamless continuum of care from the acute hospital phase to outpatient treatment to home-based therapy. The company’s FDA-cleared and CE-marked products are designed to address the systemic shortage of specialized clinicians, offering scalable, reimbursable solutions for stroke, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurological disorders. With an extensive library of rigorous clinical validation and a robust R&D pipeline, MindMaze Therapeutics is operationalizing the future of neurorestorative medicine. 

Source: Press Release | © BioAlps x Canva Library

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Asinov School — School of Embodied Intelligence — will open its doors in September 2026 in Renens, within UniverCité/Station R innovation ecosystem in the canton of Vaud. Students will be trained in building humanoid robots for healthcare, industry, logistics, and services.

The initiative is a joint venture between the Dalle Molle Foundation, the Inartis Foundation and 42 Lausanne, backed by the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW) and the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE). Its mission is clear: training a new generation of specialists capable of deploying humanoid robots in real-world environments across sectors such as healthcare, industry, logistics, and services.

Taking inspiration from the proven project-based model of 42 schools, Asinov School will offer an immersive, hands-on curriculum built on peer learning and practical experimentation — with no traditional lectures. Students will undergo intensive training before working directly alongside industrial and institutional partners.

The school operates across two complementary hubs: Renens, and Shanghai, through the System Integration Lab and Shanghai University. This dual-location setup is designed to bridge Swiss precision engineering expertise with China’s dynamic industrial robotics ecosystem. A collaboration with the Unitree–Shanghai University Embodied Intelligence Joint Lab will provide access to cutting-edge mobile and humanoid robotic platforms.

Beyond industrial applications, the project carries a broader social vision — particularly in home care and assisted living, where humanoid robots could support daily life while preserving the human dimensions of care, connection, and judgment.

Source: Bilan | © AI Generated – Canva Library

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Tucked away in Vouvry, in the Swiss canton of Valais, TRB Chemedica is the kind of company that rarely makes headlines yet quietly supplies patients around the world. A delegation from Swiss Valley recently had the opportunity to tour the site, discover its manufacturing processes, and walk the prefilled-syringe filling lines first-hand.

The company specialises in prefilled syringes containing hyaluronic-acid-based solutions designed to relieve joint pain. Its flagship product, OSTENIL®, is a viscoelastic solution injected directly into the joint space to ease pain and improve mobility in osteoarthritis of the knee — as well as other large synovial joints such as the hip and shoulder.

But joint care is only part of the picture. The Vouvry site also produces ophthalmic solutions for vision care. Visiol® is intended for use as a surgical aid in operations on the anterior and posterior segments of the eye, including: cataract extraction, intraocular lens implantation, corneal transplantation, filtration surgery for glaucoma, and surgical procedures for retinal reattachment.

Furthermore, TRB Chemedica manufactures in Valais GM1, a compound used notably in South America to relieve the effects of Parkinson’s disease. The GM1 production is a particularly striking example of pharmaceutical craftsmanship: derived from porcine brain tissue, it relies on an extremely precise and demanding manufacturing process, with output of around 50 kg per year.

Beyond manufacturing, the site is home to a dedicated Research & Development hub, and further expansion projects are on the horizon — though details were not disclosed during the visit.

A family business with global reach

Founded in 1980 by Guido Di Napoli, TRB Chemedica remains a family-owned company. The Vouvry site employs 107 people and forms part of an international group with around 1,000 staff and 20 subsidiaries worldwide. The group reported 2024 sales of roughly CHF 250 million, and operates three production facilities: Vouvry (Switzerland), Brazil, and Argentina.

A warm thank-you to Philippe Tivollier, site director, for his welcome and for opening the doors to a business that combines deep manufacturing expertise with a genuine commitment to patient care — right here in the Valais.

©BioAlps

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Swiss-American biotech HAYA Therapeutics has dosed the first cohort in the Phase 1 clinical trial of HTX-001, its lead investigational therapy and a first-in-class candidate aimed at the underlying fibrosis that drives heart disease.

HTX-001 is an antisense oligonucleotide designed to downregulate WISPER, a heart stress-specific long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) that is overexpressed in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. By lowering WISPER expression in cardiac myofibroblasts, the therapy is intended to reprogramme this fibrotic, disease-driving cell population back toward a healthy state. In preclinical studies, the company reports, HTX-001 reduced pathological cardiac fibrosis and improved heart function.

The trial’s initial focus is nonobstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (nHCM), which accounts for an estimated 30–60% of all hypertrophic cardiomyopathy cases and is marked by thickened heart walls, impaired diastolic function, and significant fibrosis. Crucially, today’s available treatments do not directly address the fibrotic process itself — leaving a clear gap that HAYA is targeting.

“A targeted anti-fibrotic therapy for nHCM offers the potential to address an important unmet medical need, as currently available treatments fail to address the underlying fibrotic process that drives disease,” said Jordan Shin, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Medical Officer of HAYA Therapeutics.

The milestone caps a journey that began with the science itself. WISPER was first discovered in 2017 by Samir Ounzain, Ph.D., HAYA’s co-founder and CEO, who identified its role in cardiac fibrosis and remodeling. He went on to co-found the company with Daniel Blessing, Ph.D., co-founder and CSO, whose team translated HTX-001 from concept into a clinical candidate.

“With HTX-001, we are translating that biology into an investigational precision RNA-guided therapy designed to enable the reprogramming of cardiac fibroblasts, the sentinel effector cells of cardiac fibrosis,” Ounzain said. Blessing called the dosing “a meaningful milestone for the entire HAYA team as we advance our science from the laboratory into clinical development.”

The Phase 1a/b study will evaluate the safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics of HTX-001 across multiple-ascending-dose cohorts — first in healthy volunteers, then in nHCM patients.

HTX-001 is investigational and has not been approved by the FDA, EMA, or any other regulatory authority; its safety and clinical benefit remain to be established.

Headquartered at the Biopôle life-sciences park in Lausanne, with laboratory facilities at Lilly Gateway Labs in San Diego, HAYA is developing a broader pipeline of RNA-guided medicines targeting fibrosis-driven and chronic, age-related diseases. The company raised a $65 million Series A in 2025 to advance the platform.

Source: Press Release | ©Haya Therapeuthics

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Join the Swiss Health Valley community for a BioAlps’ INSIDE event, at Biofactory Competence Center – Fribourg (FR) from 3.30 pm to 5.30 pm on 3 June 2026.

Since its founding in 2015, the Biofactory Competence Center (BCC) in Fribourg is a unique biopharmaceutical training and research institution in Switzerland and part of HEIA-FR, the School of Engineering and Architecture of Fribourg. The center has grown into a pivotal player in the Swiss biotech landscape. Located at the crossroads of applied research, industry collaboration, and academic excellence, BCC is making significant contributions to the biopharmaceutical and food sectors, all while maintaining a compact and agile team of five to ten specialists, depending on project demand.

Programme

3.00 pm | Doors Opening

3.30 pm | Welcome

• Magali Bischof, Secretary General, BioAlps

3.40 pm | Presentations

• Dr Carmen Jungo Rhême, Director, Biofactory Competence Center
• Dr. Grégory Resch, Head of the Bacteriophage Laboratory, CHUV
• Dr. Eva-Maria Balet, CEO and Founder, Regenosca

4.30 pm | Tour

5.45 pm | Networking

6.15 pm | End of the event

Thursday 3 June 2026, 3.30 pm – 5.30 pm |Biofactory Competence Center – Bluefactory Fribourg, Pass. du Cardinal 13b, 1700 Fribourg, Suisse | French

Register here – Only a limited number of seats available!

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Swiss biotool startup Bionomous has launched Sortivo, an automated benchtop platform for the gentle screening, sorting, and plating of complex biological entities — a step the company says will help labs adopt New Approach Methodologies (NAMs), the non-animal alternatives increasingly favoured by regulators.

Sortivo handles delicate biological entities ranging from roughly 300 μm to 2 mm — among them zebrafish embryos and organoids — automating workflows that until now have meant hours of manual pipetting under a stereomicroscope. The system pairs high-resolution brightfield and multi-channel fluorescence imaging with AI-based classification and gentle handling in a single compact device. In effect, Bionomous is offering for large, fragile entities what flow cytometry long provided for single cells: individualised screening at scale.

Built for a regulatory shift

The launch lands at a pivotal moment for drug development. Regulators are actively pushing labs toward NAMs — non-mammalian, non-animal methods that offer ethical, sustainability, and scientific advantages over traditional rodent or non-human-primate models in toxicology and pre-clinical work. Zebrafish embryos and organoids sit at the centre of that shift, but their use at scale has been held back by the labour-intensive, manual workflows around them.

By automating those steps, Bionomous argues, Sortivo can help academic, pharma, and CRO labs turn the promise of NAMs into routine, reproducible experiments.

“Sortivo represents the next step in our mission to automate and accelerate life science research,” said Frank Bonnet, CEO and co-founder of Bionomous. “Our customers told us very clearly: zebrafish and organoid workflows have outgrown manual sorting. They need a platform that combines gentle handling with image-based AI and standardised plating — one they can actually afford and operate every week. Sortivo is our answer.”

For co-founder and CMO Ana Hernando Ariza, the platform’s origins matter as much as its features. “What I am most proud of is that Sortivo was designed by biologists and engineers who understand the work done by hand. Every feature comes from a real conversation with a real lab. Sortivo is not just an automation device; it is a push for the kind of NAMs-based science the industry is moving towards.”

From EggSorter to Sortivo

Founded at EPFL in November 2019, Bionomous first made its name with the EggSorter, a device for handling zebrafish eggs and other small biological entities now installed in labs across Europe, North America, and Asia. Sortivo extends that platform to larger and more complex entities, broadening the company’s reach as demand for animal-free testing methods grows.

Source: Press Release | Bionomous’ team, ©Bionomous

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Geneva-based neurotechlogy company Neurosoft Bioelectronics announces that it has raised a $7.5 million oversubscribed seed financing round. Headquartered in Campus Biotech with a US presence in New York, the company is developing a scalable and soft brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). The funds will be used to advance clinical trials across both the United States and Europe.

Skybound Venture Capital led the round, with participation from Protocol Labs, IAG Capital Partners, and Connecticut Innovations, among others. This oversubscribed round brings Neurosoft’s total funding raised to date to more than $20 million, reflecting strong investor confidence in Neurosoft’s clinical progress and the strategic timing of the AI-powered neurotechnology opportunity.

Beyond its near-term clinical goals, Neurosoft is building a highly scalable neural data platform, leveraging data collected from its minimally invasive brain interfaces to build a foundation model of the human cortex. Just as large language models are trained on vast text corpora, Neurosoft’s foundation model will be trained on large-scale, high-quality neural recordings captured through its implantable devices. In the near term, this model will redefine what invasive BCIs can deliver for patients with severe neurological conditions. Longer term, it will also benefit non-invasive BCIs, positioning brain interfaces as the next universal layer of communication between humans and machines.

Neurosoft’s platform enables access to the full cortex without penetrating brain tissue. Its proprietary soft, stretchable electrodes are up to 1,000 times more compliant than those used in other flexible neural interfaces, cover up to 30x more cortex than state-of-the-art BCIs, and only require a minimally invasive procedure.

Neurosoft has tested its brain interface in 10 patients across two ongoing clinical trials (at UTHealth Houston and UMC Utrecht), including a first-of-its-kind 64-channel soft, stretchable brain interface study for epilepsy surgery guidance. The company’s technology is protected by more than 25 patents, and has been published  in more than 25 peer-reviewed articles. The company has established a GMP manufacturing line in Switzerland, holds an ISO 13485 certification, and has received FDA feedback through multiple pre-submission meetings that has informed its regulatory pathway for its first commercial product.

“Our soft electrode platform, paired with a streamlined regulatory pathway, gives us access to neural data at a quality and scale no other approach can safely match today,” said Nicolas Vachicouras, PhD, CEO and Co-Founder of Neurosoft Bioelectronics. “That data is the foundation for improved clinical outcomes, and a cortical foundation model that will help shape the next generation of brain interfaces. The investor support we’ve seen in this round validates that we’re on the right path.”

Earlier this year, Neurosoft Bioelectronics also announced a partnership with Science Corp, which will accelerate the development of its BCI platform.

“Neurosoft isn’t just building a medical device; they are building the definitive interface between the human mind and the digital world. Their stretchable, sub-millimeter electrodes are a feat of engineering that finally allows us to interface seamlessly with the brain without damaging it. We are proud to lead this investment to accelerate their mission of treating devastating conditions like severe tinnitus and epilepsy, while simultaneously gathering the unprecedented neural data required to map and decode the human cortex at scale,” said George Varvarelis, GP at Skybound Venture Capital.

The seed financing will fund the company’s near-term milestones: demonstrating minimally invasive deployment in human patients and achieving US commercialization of their first brain interface.

About Neurosoft Bioelectronics

Neurosoft Bioelectronics is a neurotechnology company developing stretchable and scalable brain-computer interfaces, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland and a US subsidiary in New York. Spun out of EPFL, the company’s proprietary soft, stretchable electrode platform provides full-cortical access without penetrating brain tissue, enabling high-quality neural data acquisition. Neurosoft holds ISO 13485:2016 certification and has conducted first-in-human clinical studies at UTHealth Houston (US) and UMC Utrecht (Netherlands). Learn more at www.neurosoft-bio.com.

Source: Press Release | ©Neurosoft Bioelectronics

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The Jules Gonin Eye Hospital, the CHUV and the University of Lausanne are to study the genomes of 12,000 people from highly consanguineous families in Pakistan in order to improve the detection of risks associated with developing rare diseases.

The Swiss National Science Foundation has awarded a funding of CHF 3,494,000 to Dr Muhammad Ansar, PhD, (Jules Gonin Eye Hospital), Prof. Alexandre Reymond, PhD (Director of the Integrative Genomics Centre / Health 2030 Genome Centre, University of Lausanne), Dr Federico Santoni, PhD (Department of Endocrinology, Diabetology and Metabolism, CHUV) and Prof. Iram Anjum (Dean of Kinnaird College for Women, Lahore). The project is scheduled to run for four years.

The project plans to include 12,000 people from 2,000 consanguineous Pakistani families with ‘multiplex’ cases. These are families in which the parents are related (cousins, for example) and in which several members suffer from the same rare disease. These diseases frequently affect the eyes or metabolism. This configuration facilitates the identification of shared recessive pathogenic variants, in other words, genetic abnormalities that cause a disease only when two identical copies are present (one inherited from each parent). This is known as homozygosity.

In these families, these variants are more common and easier to detect, as they appear consistently in affected individuals within the same family. They are said to cosegregate with the disease.
This enables researchers to trace genetic causes more effectively and identify the responsible genes, drawing on the expertise of the CHUV and the University of Lausanne in identifying genetic variants involved in rare diseases, as well as the advanced technological capabilities of the Health 2030 Genome Center for large-scale genome sequencing and analysis.

Thanks to whole-genome sequencing using ‘long-read’ technology and other complementary approaches, the project will improve genetic diagnosis, generate significant genomic resources and thus advance research into rare diseases and human genetics on a global scale.

Source: UNIL | ©Canva Media Library

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On Wednesday, May 13th, at Campus Biotech Geneva, BioAlps welcomed Elena Fernandez Kleinlein and Michael Huebner of Johnson & Johnson Innovation / JLABS Accelerator for an afternoon of close-up encounters with some of the most promising neurotech and biotech ventures emerging from the Swiss Health Valley.

The visit followed a morning at Biopole in Lausanne and was part of a wider Swiss tour wrapped around the Swiss HLG Annual Conference and the kick-off of the 2026 Startup Initiative in Montreux. For JLABS — J&J’s incubator programme, which has supported more than 1,200 startups worldwide over the past decade — the brief was simple: open a direct line of dialogue between J&J’s external innovation team and the founders, scientists, and ecosystem builders shaping the next wave of life-sciences innovation in Switzerland.

The startups in the room

Four ventures took the floor at Campus Biotech, each tackling a fundamentally different problem in modern medicine:

• Antion Biosciences — Smart In Vivo Cell Programming. Antion’s proprietary mirGE technology enables simultaneous multiplex activation and silencing of gene targets, unlocking immune-evasive design and durable, multi-gene cellular reprogramming directly inside the body. Presented by Antonija Šakić.

• Adoram Therapeutics — AI-enabled allosteric drug discovery. A Swiss university spinoff, Adoram’s CamBio platform combines real-time allosteric screening with advanced AI for target prioritization, molecular design, and toxicity prediction — opening the door to best- and first-in-class allosteric modulators against GPCR targets long considered intractable. Presented by David Pejoski.

• Release Therapeutics — Living implants for sustained protein delivery. This Geneva-based startup turns implanted, encapsulated human cells into long-running biological factories: months to years of sustained therapy from a single biocompatible capsule. With proof of concept across murine, non-human primate, and Phase I oncology data, Release was recently awarded the 2026 Pfizer Prize for Biomedical Research. Presented by Nicolas Mach.

• Cancentus — Optimizing the therapeutic index in oncology. A UNIGE-born project now hosted at BaseLaunch, Cancentus is focused on the critical balance between treatment efficacy and patient safety — and is currently raising. Presented by Thanos Halazonetis.

An ecosystem at the same table

What made the afternoon work wasn’t just the science on the slides — it was who sat around the table. Tracy Laabs (Wyss Geneva), Wilma Lukas (FONGIT / Innosuisse), Raquel Rouco Garcia (Science Innovation Hub – UNIGE), and Raluca Flükiger (Unitec) brought the translational, financing, and tech-transfer perspective that keeps Geneva’s life-sciences engine running.

Looking ahead

It’s a reminder that what makes the region productive is not any single lab or accelerator, but the tight loop between research, translation, financing, and clinical know-how — all within a short walk of each other.

For an afternoon, BioAlps was proud to embrace once more its core mission: offer a space where world-class science meets the partners who can turn it into therapies. There’s real momentum here, serious engineering depth, and a generation of founders confident enough to pitch the world’s largest healthcare company on the work they’re doing in Geneva.

A warm thank-you to Elena and Michael for making the trip, and to the founders and ecosystem partners who showed up with their best work. We’re looking forward to where these conversations lead.

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AC Immune SA, a Lausanne-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company pioneering precision therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases, announces that Dr Andrea Pfeifer has decided to retire from her role as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of AC Immune, after 23 years of tenure, at the upcoming Annual General Meeting (AGM) to spend more time with her family.

Dr Pfeifer co-founded AC Immune SA in 2003 as CEO and has shaped the company into a resilient, innovation-driven, pioneering clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing precision therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases. Dr Pfeifer listed the company on the Nasdaq stock exchange in 2016. She has been widely recognized for her leadership in defining global clinical development strategies linked to the prevention and disease modification of both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

Dr Pfeifer, Chief Executive Officer of AC Immune, commented: “It has been a great honor to serve as CEO of AC Immune together with so many dedicated and brilliant colleagues over the years, not least my co-founders. From our foundation, the evolution of the company has been driven by shared purpose and guided by strong science, clear values and integrity. I would like to thank the Board, and especially our Chair Martin Zügel, for their leadership and for allowing me to step back and retire so that I can focus on my family at this time. I will remain available to support Martin in his role as interim CEO during this transition period.”

Martin Zügel, MD, Chair of the Board of Directors and interim CEO-designate, said, “The Board and I salute the exceptional contribution Andrea has made to AC Immune and respect her decision to retire from her executive role. Throughout her tenure as CEO, Andrea has led with clarity of vision, decisive leadership, and unwavering integrity, consistently championing the company’s long-term potential. She leaves behind a highly capable organization, well-positioned to deliver transformative therapies for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. With three Precision Prevention candidates for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s already in the clinic and strategic partnerships with Eli Lilly, Takeda and Johnson & Johnson, the company is entering its next phase from a position of real strength. We are confident that as the pipeline matures, Andrea’s impact will become even more evident.”

AC Immune’s Board of Directors has appointed the Chair, Dr Martin Zügel, to serve as interim CEO while the ongoing search for a permanent successor continues. Dr Pfeifer will be engaged as an Advisor to facilitate the transition and will be appointed as Honorary Chair of the Board of Directors and Co-Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board. The Board appointed a leading industry consultant to conduct the CEO search.

Source: Press Release | ©AC Immune, Dr Andrea Pfeifer

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