Navignostics: The Venture Leader Biotech on a mission to identify optimal cancer treatments for each patient

09.05.2023 06:30, Morgane Ghilardi

Meet Jana Fischer, founder and CEO of Navignostics. The startup characterizes tumors using spatial single-cell proteomics to identify the cancer treatment that will optimally fight each individual patient's disease and accelerates cancer drug development by providing key insights into drug mechanisms and tumor signatures for companion diagnostics development. In June, Jana will join nine other biotech innovators on a business development and investor roadshow in Boston.

Name: Jana Fischer 
Location: Zurich, Switzerland 
Nationality: Swiss 
Education: University of Zurich, Ph.D., Computational Biology
Job title: CEO 
Number of employees: 8 
Money raised: CHF 8.5 million
First touchpoint with Venturelab: Business Creation workshop, 2021

 

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"[P]articularly for immunotherapy treatment decisions it is crucial to know which exact types of immune cells are in the tumor microenvironment and how they interact with the tumor cells."

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Whom does your product or solution help, and how?
Our mission is to identify the ideal treatment to battle each cancer patient’s disease and reduce suffering throughout their journey. 
Half of all cancer patients do not respond or become resistant to treatment despite a growing number of approved cancer drugs. The reason for the poor outcomes of many cancer patients is not the unavailability of drugs, but the fact that oncologists lack the tools to choose the most suitable treatment for each patient among the available options. At the same time, many clinical trials fail due to a lack of information to identify responders to novel drugs. We use spatial single-cell proteomic analysis of tumors to help clinicians identify the optimal treatment for each patient and to help drug developers identify the right patients to treat with novel cancer drugs. 
 
What market are you addressing and what is the potential of your startup in that market?
A focus for us right now is the immuno-oncology market. About half of all cancer patients are eligible for immunotherapy and the number of available immunotherapies is growing rapidly but existing diagnostic approaches are often unreliable at identifying responders. Our spatial single-cell proteomic information adds a lot of value in this case because particularly for immunotherapy treatment decisions it is crucial to know which exact types of immune cells are in the tumor microenvironment and how they interact with the tumor cells.

How did you come up with the idea for your startup?
During our research as part of the University of Zurich Bodenmiller lab, we repeatedly observed in retrospective cohort analyses that our spatial single-cell proteomic approaches were extremely powerful in characterizing tumors and identifying different subgroups of patients with different tumor properties and clinical outcomes. So, we wanted to transition from making such observations retrospectively to helping patients directly by identifying the best treatment option to fight each individual patient's disease.

How do you think the Venture Leaders roadshow will help you achieve your vision? 
The Venture Leaders roadshow will be an important step in our company's US expansion plan. This unique opportunity to generate visibility and form key connections with important US players will help us build the foundation to access the US market. Further, the program provides great coaching, networking, and experience exchange opportunities between the different startups.

What excites you most about your work right now?
Founding Navignostics and going through the early company development stages together with my co-founders and our growing team has been incredibly exciting and rewarding. Purely a scientist by training, I have had incredibly valuable learning experiences and every new insight that I gain gives me a sense of more thorough understanding of what it takes to build a successful company. I am very proud that we have gotten the company to this point and I am excited about continuing to build and grow Navignostics to benefit patients worldwide.

How did you go about building your team?
Navignostics was founded by four co-founders: Andrea Jacobs, Stéphane Chevrier, Bernd Bodenmiller, and me. We all knew each other from our years of research in the Bodenmiller lab but we have complementary fields of expertise, which makes us a strong team and brings together all the required experience to realize our vision for Navignostics. We have since grown our team to 8 and soon-to-be 9 fantastic employees with a mixture of scientific, laboratory, software development, and business development expertise.

What are your team's key achievements to date?
In March 2022, we founded Navignostics and throughout the year we raised CHF 8.5 million and completed the board of directors and the advisory board of the company. Right now, we are in the process of moving our growing team from the UZH Irchel campus to our own labs and offices in our Swiss company premises in the new life-science cluster in Horgen Oberdorf (Zurich area). We are currently engaged in several collaboration projects with clinical and biotech partners and in parallel we are developing our first diagnostic service to be approved for the Swiss and then US and European markets. 

How did you come up with the name of your startup?
We did several rounds of brainstorming during which each of the co-founders came up with many potential name creations but without checking whether the names already existed. From those many creations, we extracted common concepts and narrowed them down to the most important ones. A recurring theme was the guiding/navigating of cancer treatment. In the end we of course had to kick out many creations because they already existed or because domains were taken. We finally settled on Navignostics when we didn't find a single Google entry.

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"Probably most rewarding of all is to truly identify with your company and your team because of what you have built and achieved together."

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Who do you look to for guidance and mentorship?
We were fortunate to have several very supportive figures providing great advice and guidance on various topics throughout the Navignostics journey. I am very thankful to all of them, but what I find most comforting is to be able to get the feedback of my co-founders and to be able to discuss, rehearse, strategize, and develop the company toward our shared vision.

What is the most rewarding aspect of being a founder?
When we decided to start Navignostics, I was a scientist with zero previous business or entrepreneurial training. Hence, learning (by doing) every last detail of what it takes to build a company and gaining more and more insight into the startup and business world has been very exciting. It is very rewarding to see how much one has learned in a short time, gain confidence in a new situation, and see successes. Probably most rewarding of all is to truly identify with your company and your team because of what you have built and achieved together.
 
What did you want to do with your life at age 12?
Certainly not this. I would never have thought of starting my own company. I come from a family of teachers but was never interested in becoming a teacher myself. Topics of biomedicine did already interest me quite early. Though I took a few turns in my career development that would have definitely not been predictable based on my interests at 12. One turn was when I switched from biology into bioinformatics and computational biology and another turn was from academic research into the entrepreneur and startup world. I never once regretted taking such a turn. It was always an enrichment.

What is always in your fridge and why?
You will always find cold beer in my fridge, ready to share with some friends. 

 

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM
The Venture Leaders Biotech 2023 were chosen from over 70 applications by a jury of investors and technology experts. The roadshow in Boston, the vibrant life science hub, provides a unique opportunity for entrepreneurs to accelerate their startups' expansion in the US while expanding their professional network and profiting from workshops with investors and industry leaders. This year's Venture Leaders Biotech program is organized by Venturelab in partnership with Swissnex Boston and supported by Debiopharm, Novartis, EY - Ernst & Young, VISCHER, EPFL, ETH Zurich, Hansjörg Wyss, and the Swiss Biotech Association.
 

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