#3 of the most promising Swiss Startups of 2018 - Lunaphore

05.09.2018 20:00, Philipp Gollmer

The Lausanne startup wants to use its diagnostics technology to give personalised medicine a helping hand.

Medical research is taking giant steps forward. In the last 10 years, for example, the number of biomarkers for diagnosing breast cancer have risen two to three-fold. This trend has opened up unforeseen opportunities for personalised medicine – which means more and more laboratory tests are required.

It is precisely this reason why Lunaphore’s future looks so promising. Founded in 2014, the company’s mission is to automate tissue diagnostics. ‘We want to make these tests so efficient that no doctor has to ask how many they can perform,’ says Ata Tuna Ciftlik, Lunaphore’s CEO. Thanks to completely innovative technology, his company’s workflow automation machines are streets ahead in efficiency. ‘Hitherto, diagnostics of this type took between two and eight hours; we have reduced the time required to only a few minutes and are just starting to deliver more reliable results.’

This improvement in efficiency benefits the patient and is attractive to the diagnostics laboratory since the sample throughput is multiplied. Founded by Ciftlik, Déborah Heintze and Diego Gabriel Dupouy, the medtech company’s potential is also attracting numerous venture capitalists. They have invested a total of CHF 13 million in three financing rounds, the last of which has just closed.




Lunaphore is currently testing the first mass production of diagnostics machines at EPFL Innovation Park. It has outsourced production to an experienced Swiss medtech manufacturer – a maximum of 100 machines are due to be built in 2019. 

The Lausanne-based company has also turned to partnerships for development of the market. It is working with well-established, international companies that manufacture, inter alia, reagents for traditional tissue analysis. ‘It is not advisable as a startup at our stage to build a market from scratch. We must first win the trust of our customers.’

Text Kaspar Meuli