Finnish biotech company StemSight has for its vision restoration stem cell therapies. The company, founded by Laura Koivusalo, Anni Mörö, Tanja Ilmarinen, and Heli Skottman, uses Nobel Prize-winning iPS cell technology to manufacture corneal cells in a scalable, cost-effective manner. This scalable, consistent, and accessible alternative offers a more accessible alternative to traditional donor-dependent solutions.
In the Startup of the Day column Laura Koivusalo, the co-founder of StemSight, shares more details about the company's product and future plans.
The Startup of the Day column on AIN.Capital is dedicated to tech projects from all sectors that originate from the CEE countries. If you would like to introduce your project, please fill in the questionnaire.
Tell us about your startup. How does it work?
StemSight develops off-the-shelf cell therapies to cure blindness. We are first focusing on a severe rare disease called Limbal Stem Cell Deficiency (LSCD), where patients are desperately waiting for treatment options. Our product aims to be a one-time therapy to restore the lost cells on the surface of the eye that have been lost in LSCD - most often by burns or chemical injuries.
How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?
The technology is based on over 10 years of academic research from Tampere University in Finland. When we had exhausted the academic funding sources, we had to decide what to do with the promising technology. We decided to found StemSight, because nobody else was doing it - and our patients are waiting for our therapy!
How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?
In drug development, there is really no MVP - because you have to make choices about your final product in the beginning and stick with them through all the stages of preclinical and clinical testing until you reach regulatory approval. We also had to transform the academic research methods for manufacturing our cells to much higher-level for commercial-ready production. We have been proceeding very well on the manufacturing front. What was most challenging for us was to actually find a preclinical model to test our living cell product in, that would actually tell us what we want to know. We had to learn many lessons the hard way.
When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?
We are planning to start our first clinical trials in 2027. If everything goes well, we could ideally have our product on the market around 2030.
Tell us about the stratup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?
We are looking at a typical biotech business model based on licensing and partnering of our assets. We are currently working on two different products aimed at two different types of corneal blindness.
What are your target markets and consumers?
We are targeting global markets, but start from Europe and the US.
By satisfying the regulations in EU and US will be key in accessing those markets but also provide a validation that will open additional markets as well.
Our product is a specialty drug that will be prescribed by ophthalmologists, and ultimately surgically implanted to their patients.
What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly.
We are now 13 people. We employ mostly lab personnel, who perform cell culture and testing, but also specialist experts from stem cell therapy development and regulations.
Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round.
We raised our first round of funding in 2021, 500,000 EUR. Investors were Voima Ventures and Avohoidon tutkimussäätiö. We were later joined by Stephen Industries Inc (a Finnish family office), and now in the end of 2024 we raised 1 million EUR. The funding round was lead by Voima Ventures, with Finnish family offices Stephen Industries and Biothom joining the round. In addition to the equity, we have been able to double each investment with public funding, mostly from Business Finland, but also the European Commission.
What's next? Tell us about your future plans.
We aim to have the preclinical evidence we need to show that our therapy works in animals at the end of 2025. We will then start working towards our first-in-human trials, which we estimate to start in 2027.
