Oncobit: The Venture Leader Medtech enabling personalized cancer care

02.05.2022 16:20, Tracy Woodley

For the second consecutive year, the Venture Leaders Medtech will represent Swiss innovation in the United States. To select the 10 featured startups, a jury of professional investors and medtech experts reviewed 60 applications. These startups improve diagnostics, treatments, and well-being with innovative solutions covering artificial intelligence, sensors, smart devices, and robotics. Allow us to introduce you to each of the Venture Leaders Medtech 2022 ahead of the June 2022 roadshow in Boston and Cambridge: Meet Claudia Scheckel, the CEO of Oncobit and captain of the Swiss National Startup Team representing medtech in 2022.

Oncobit is a medtech spin-off from the University of Zurich that is developing precision diagnostic and monitoring assays for personalized cancer care. Oncobit’s products aim to provide a detailed understanding of genomic cancer alterations throughout a patient’s treatment history. Highly sensitive diagnostic and monitoring tools allow Oncobit to propose the most relevant treatment options and help physicians improve the therapies that they provide to their patients. Oncobit is addressing the rapidly expanding market of precision oncology and personalized disease monitoring with non-invasive and highly precise technologies. The company is currently focused on melanoma, but Oncobit’s approach is data-centric, modular, and expandable to other cancer types in the future.

Name: Claudia Scheckel
Location: Schlieren, Switzerland
Nationality: German
Graduated from: University of Basel, PhD (2007)
Job title: CEO of Oncobit
Number of employees: 8
Money raised: CHF 4 million 
First touchpoint with Venturelab: I participated in the Entrepreneurship Business Creation course 
in the fall of 2016, when I was exploring the idea of founding a startup (unrelated to Oncobit).

Explain in one or two short sentences what your startup does and why. 
We are developing innovative, high-quality, and cancer-specific diagnostic and monitoring tests to provide therapy decision support that enables personalized cancer care.

How and where did you come up with the idea for your startup?
Oncobit was founded due to an unmet market need regarding the diagnosis of melanoma. Two of our founders study cancer and developed an assay to address this need and were joined by two bioinformatic entrepreneurs and myself to commercialize this assay. Since then, we have expanded our repertoire and have now developed three tests aimed at providing a detailed understanding of genomic cancer alterations throughout a patient’s history. Highly sensitive diagnostic and monitoring tools allow us to identify the most appropriate treatment selections and help physicians improve the treatment options for their patients.

What do you expect from the Venture Leaders Medtech roadshow, and how will it help you achieve your vision? 
I’m looking forward to meeting potential collaborators, partners, and investors, as well as to the exchange with fellow medtech startups. I’m convinced that the knowledge and contacts I will gain by participating in the Venture Leaders roadshow will be groundbreaking for our U.S. market entry. Entering the U.S. market will be a major milestone towards enabling personalized cancer with our diagnostic and monitoring solutions.

What is the one talent you wish you had? 
A photographic memory— I hate it when I forget things I know I’ve read or seen before.

What is your favorite book and why? 
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. I think it’s absolutely fascinating to think about how our society developed, where we’ve come from, and why we still behave in certain ways even though it doesn’t make sense anymore.  

What is always in your fridge? 
Milk for my coffee.

What are you most proud of? 
That I brought Oncobit to the next level— We now have an amazing team to tackle the upcoming challenges. That I ran the New York City marathon in 2014. And that I have never been afraid to jump into something unknown, scary, or challenging in my life.

What was your favorite subject in school and why? 
Anything related to the STEM fields.

How and where do you clear your mind? 
Sports and being in the mountains, ideally in combination such as skiing or hiking.

What is the most rewarding aspect of being a founder? 
I am so proud of the progress we have made in the last few years. Knowing that I have contributed a large part to this is very satisfying.

What is the most important lesson you have learned as a founder? 
The importance of resilience, a high tolerance for frustration, and how to deal with stress. My academic career was very good training for the first two points, and I’m still trying to figure out the latter.

For more information and updates on Oncobit and the Venture Leaders Medtech 2022, follow #VLeadersMedtech on Twitter or on www.venture-leaders.ch/medtech.

The Venture Leaders Medtech program is organized by Venturelab and supported by EPF Lausanne, ETH Zurich, Hansjörg Wyss, Helbling Technik, Kellerhals Carrard, Paul Scherrer Institut, Swissnex Boston, Canton of Vaud, Canton of Zurich, and Venture Leader alumnus Dominik Lysek.