FimmCyte: The Venture Leader Biotech developing the first disease-modifying treatment for endometriosis

23.08.2022 10:30, Tracy Woodley

This fall, the Venture Leaders Biotech will represent Swiss innovation in the United States. To select the 10 featured startups, a jury of professional investors and medtech experts reviewed 90 applications. These startups improve diagnostics, treatments, and well-being with innovative solutions that cover artificial intelligence, sensors, smart devices, and robotics. Allow us to introduce you to each of the Venture Leaders Biotech 2022 ahead of the September 2022 roadshow in Boston and Cambridge: Meet Mohaned Shilaih, the co-founder of FimmCyte.

Name: Mohaned Shilaih  
Location: Zurich/Basel 
Nationality: Egyptian 
Graduated from: PhD, 2016, University of Zurich 
Job title: Co-founder 
Number of employees: 5 
First touchpoint with Venturelab: Biotech Creation Course in 2020


Explain in one or two short sentences what your startup does and why.
FimmCyte is developing the first disease modifying treatment for endometriosis, a disease that affects 10% of women with limited non-hormonal or non-surgical treatment options. 

How and where did you come up with the idea for your startup?
I have worked in women’s health for a few years and endometriosis has always been one of the biggest recognized unmet needs. With my co-founder Valentina’s expertise in biotech and working with Prof. Brigitte Leeners we finally had a team that could tackle the complexity of endometriosis. We gathered input directly from patients and physicians to pinpoint their biggest unmet needs, and from there we designed our novel treatment to be fit for purpose for eliminating hormonal-resistant endometriosis.  

What do you expect from the Venture Leaders roadshow, and how will it help you achieve your vision?
The Venture Leaders program has been instrumental in the success of many biotech startups, and we are looking forward to similar impact. Many startups successfully close financing rounds, add additional investors, or even exit after the Venture Leaders program and at FimmCyte we aim to similarly add additional investors and raise a successful financing round to enable our path to first in-human trials. 

Who does your product or solution help, and how?
Endometriosis is a global disease with over 176 million affected women. Our treatment will be the first disease modifying treatment applicable to women with endometriosis resistant to current interventions. Our vision is to reduce the disease burden of women with endometriosis as well as the burden of the healthcare systems. With an estimated 10% prevalence in reproductive age women, our product will have broad applicability and market for the treatment of endometriosis. 

What are you most excited about at work right now?
We are working on a new treatment indication and the preliminary results look very promising. We are very excited about the potential of helping more women and further advancing the field.  

How did you build your team?
Me and my co-founder Valentina know each other for many years and share many values that we think are critical for the success of any venture, such as: pragmatism, agility, grit, authenticity, and modesty. Most importantly is our common interest to advance women’s health. All our team members share a passion for women’s health and deep patient centricity, and we collectively believe in the mentioned values. 

Which market are you addressing and what is the potential of your startup?
Endometriosis affects one in ten women of reproductive age worldwide. Our initial focus will be on the US and EU market, but in alignment with our mission to help advance women’s health globally, we aim to make our treatment available in emerging markets soon after our first marketing approval.

What are your key achievements to date?
Our key achievement to date is having a validated lead asset with strong efficacy evidence in all major subtypes of endometriosis.  

What is one thing not many people know about you?
I have four sisters. And I have witnessed women’s health challenges firsthand early in my life till today.  

What is your favorite podcast and why?
The innovation ecosystem by Mark Bidwell. Because of the outstanding guests and the relevant topics in the life of a startup. 

How did you come up with the name of your startup?
FimmCyte combines the core fields of our startup: “fimm” is homophone of femme (female) showing our focus on women’s health, “imm” is derived from immunology. Cyte relates to cell, but together with imm+cyte it is also another homophone of insight, relating to how we see our innovation being derived from integrated insights.

What is something you wish you had known about being a founder?
There is a lot of great literature on entrepreneurship describing what to expect your journey to look like, but no matter how many of those you read your experience will undoubtedly be different, feel different, and will demand a lot of creative problem solving as well as a lot of patience.

How do you stay on top of industry trends?
Our network of KOLs, fellow entrepreneurs, coaches, and advisors are indispensable to stay abreast of the latest in the field. We also visit relevant conferences constantly and have automatic alerts setup for relevant topics. 

The Venture Leaders Biotech program is co-organized by Venturelab and Swissnex Boston and supported by Debiopharm, EPFL Lausanne, ETH Zurich, EY - Ernst & Young, Swiss Biotech Association, VISCHER, Hansjörg Wyss, and Venture Leaders alum Ulf Grawunder.