Dntox, a Düsseldorf, Germany-based life science startup that enables non-animal testing of chemicals for neurotoxicity, raised €1.4M in Seed funding.
The round was led by High-Tech Gründerfonds, with participation from Barbara Korte-Sturm and Nikolaus Sturm, Bool Capital, and AQAL Capital.
The company intends to use the funds to set up the test laboratories in Düsseldorf, aim for GLP accreditation and launch the test battery on the market.
Founded in March 2022 as a spin-off from the IUF – Leibniz Institute for Environmental Medicine Research, and based on the research work of Professor Dr. Ellen Fritsche, medical scientist and toxicologist at the IUF, Dntox has developed a test system based on human cells that maps important processes in human brain development and thus enables the testing of chemicals without the need for animal experiments. To date, these tests have been carried out primarily in a large number of animal experiments on rodents and are not only ethically questionable but also extremely time-consuming and costly. In addition, the results can only be transferred to humans to a limited extent due to species differences.
The company’s system, consisting of a battery of individual tests combined with proprietary readout and evaluation algorithms, provides a suitable solution that enables ethically safe testing for customers in the chemical, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries.
The team of the founders include Prof. Fritsche, the economist Silke Beaucamp, the biotechnologists Dr. Katharina Koch and Dr. Kristina Bartmann as well as the bioinformaticians Dr. Arif Dönmez and Prof. Axel Mosig.
FinSMEs
19/06/2023