LUXEMBOURG/THE WOODLANDS, Texas/REGENSBURG, Germany – Dec. 20, 2022.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) is supporting Numares Health AG with a quasi-equity financing agreement of up to €20 million. The Regensburg-based company, newly headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas, has developed a fully automated in-vitro diagnostics platform, the AXINON® System. It improves the quality of diagnosing chronic diseases of the kidney, heart and liver, as well as cancer and multiple sclerosis.
The AXINON® System combines nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and artificial intelligence to collect and analyze metabolomic data from blood or urine samples. Instead of focusing on a single biomarker, Numares uses NMR to evaluate groups of metabolites, called “metabolite constellations,” that are analyzed by machine learning.
Several major U.S. laboratories are already using this chemical-free technology. The laboratories and Numares Health share the profits of getting more precise results with the technology. For example, with Numares technology, rejection reactions following kidney transplantations can be detected sooner and more precisely.
Numares will use the EIB financing – a quasi-equity facility of €20 million – for further research and development. Existing investors will contribute a complementary €20 million for marketing investments to achieve mass commercialization of the proprietary technology products in the EU and U.S.
The loan is part of the European Guarantee Fund’s Venture Debt financing. The EGF Venture Debt product has been designed as an answer to consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic that has deteriorated commercial banks’ willingness to provide financing for risk investment into innovative technology companies like Numares. The EGF benefit is the clear enhancement of the EIB risk capacity to address sub-optimal investment situations arising from the pandemic.
“We are proud to support this innovative health company,” said EIB vice president Ambroise Fayolle. “We see the promise of improved multi-marker diagnostics that could help patients where single-marker diagnostics have failed or been inadequate.”
Numares CEO Winton Gibbons said, “The Numares approach holds the potential to answer medical questions where current diagnostics have been inadequate. The use of artificial intelligence and highly standardized NMR data will result in a variety of algorithms to diagnose and manage a number of diseases. With the EIB venture debt financing, we will bring this novel, revolutionary technology to the patients who need better diagnostic tools.”
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Background
The European Investment Bank (EIB) is the long-term lending institution of the European Union owned by its Member States. It makes long-term finance available for sound investment to contribute towards EU policy goals. The EIB’s activities focus on the following priority areas: climate and environment, development, innovation and skills, small and medium-sized businesses, infrastructure and cohesion. The EIB works closely with other EU institutions to foster European integration, promote the development of the European Union and support EU policies in over 140 countries around the world.
The European Guarantee Fund (EGF) has been created by 22 EU member states as an answer to the COVID-pandemic. With state guarantees of about €25 billion, the EIB will be able to mobilize up to €200 billion to support small and medium-sized companies suffering from the economic fall out of the COVID-pandemic.
Numares Health AG is a health care company using AI-enabled technology to develop novel diagnostic tests to help physicians improve care for their patients with chronic diseases, including kidney, cardiovascular, liver and neurologic conditions.
Numares develops advanced tests to aid in diagnosis and measurement of disease progression by applying machine learning to metabolomics and other biomarkers. The company developed the AXINON® System that makes next-generation use of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to evaluate metabolic constellations and a proprietary Magnetic Group Signaling (MGS®) technology that enables the spectroscopy.
