Nutrilytics™ technology for personalised stable-glcemic diet interventions

	Next higher product group	digital therapeutic (dTx)
	Status	2020-11-30 existent
	Organisation	Perfood GmbH

Perfood GmbH. (11/30/20). "Press Release: German Digital Therapeutics Startup Perfood Closes 5m Euro Series A Led by Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund". Lübeck.

> Funding used for launch of migraine therapy under German Digital Healthcare Act

> Expansion into other indications after lead indication migraine

> UV-Cap and investiere join the round as co-investors

Perfood, the German digital therapeutic startup, has received 5 million Euro in its Series A funding round. Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund led the round and is joined by German family office UV-Cap and Swiss investment platform investiere. Dr. Oliver Reuss will join Perfood’s advisory board for Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund together with Nicholas Vetter of UV-Cap, Jochen Brüggen, representing Perfood’s Seed investors, and Dominik Burziwoda. The funds will be used for launching Perfood’s first prescription therapeutic sinCephalea for the treatment of migraine and to prepare the expansion of the technology into other indications. This includes conductions of clinical studies to advance its pipeline of digital therapeutics products.

With products such as sinCephalea, Perfood transfers state-of-the-art science into digital health applications for the treatment of various diseases. Scientific studies over the past few years have shown that glycemic reactions are fully individual. It has been a well-known fact that the glucose metabolism plays a major role in the development of diseases such as migraine, diabetes, heart attack, stroke and cancer. Since 2017, the medical team at Perfood has been developing digital therapy programs based on personalized, blood sugar-stabilizing nutrition. The personalized nutrition intervention is enhanced with targeted behavioral modulation, such as features for adherence management and patient education. For that, Perfood tracks nutrition, activity, symptoms, and medication as well as glycemic responses for a limited period of two weeks, followed by a digital patient support program.

Personalized stable-glycemic nutrition as active substance

With patent-pending Nutrilytics™, Perfood has developed the leading technology for personalized stable-glycemic diet interventions. The technology allows to precisely interpret the glycemic response to food, physical activity, medication, sleep and symptoms of illness. Nutrilytics™ consists of a set of algorithms based on artificial intelligence. The algorithms have been trained with Perfood’s unique data set with more than 6.5 million metabolic data points, consisting of glycemic reactions, intestinal microbiome and lifestyle factors. The data stack is also used by Perfood as a platform for deep phenotyping and precision medicine.

Dr. Oliver Reuss, Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund explains: “There are numerous diseases related to blood-glucose metabolism. Perfood has developed a unique technology to address the underlying causes. This technology has the potential to perfectly complement the current standard treatments of various prevalent diseases, such as metabolic or immune diseases."

"With Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund, UV-Cap and investiere, Perfood has an outstanding setup to bring sinCephalea onto the market not only in Germany but also internationally", says Dominik Burziwoda, founder and CEO of Perfood GmbH. Dr. Torsten Schröder, Chief Medical Officer Perfood, adds: “We are very pleased to have such excellent partners on board who combine first-class know-how from medicine and high-tech. Together we can offer a digital therapy solution as an innovative treatment option for millions of migraine patients."

AboutPerfood GmbH

Perfood is developing a pipeline of digital therapeutics powered by personalized nutrition. The German company has developed cutting-edge technology for interpreting an individual’s glycemic response to food. At the same time, Perfood has built one of the leading datasets for deep phenotyping with respect to glycemic responses and gut microbiome.

Perfood was founded out of the University of Lubeck, one of Germany’s leading Life Science and Computer Engineering institutions, by Dominik Burziwoda (CEO), Dr. Torsten Schröder (Chief Medical Officer), Dr. Christoph Twesten (CTO) and Prof. Dr. Christian Sina. Its team consists of more than 20 people, with background in data science, nutrition, medicine, computer engineering, business and design.

Perfood collaborates in scientific projects with leading multinational as well as small and medium sized enterprises, such as Evonik, Beiersdorf and Boehringer Ingelheim. Its Million-Friends App is used by academic institutions, such as the Leibniz Centre and University of Lubeck in the largest German study on the spread of Sars-CoV-2 (www.elisa-luebeck.de).

Press contact:

Ulrike Voß
Email: ulrike.voss@perfood.de
T: +49 (0)172 590 55 50
www.perfood.de

About Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund

Operating as a separate legal entity, the Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund (BIVF) drives innovation through its strategic investments in early-stage science and technology. With an investment volume of 300 million Euro, the Venture Fund invests in biotechand start-up companies with innovative concepts and technologies that have the potential to provide groundbreaking platforms. BIVF currently holds a portfolio of more than 30 companies and creates companies when it identifies promising research projects in university and academia. BIVF’s interest in young, mainly technology-oriented companies demonstrates its commitment to investigate new ideas and new science to create options for Boehringer Ingelheim to expand into new approaches and businesses in the field of Oncology, Regenerative Medicine, Infectious Diseases and Digital Health.
www.boehringer-ingelheim-venture.com

AboutUV-Cap

UV Cap GmbH & Co KG (UV Cap) is a German Private Equity firm / Family Office focused on investing in healthcare companies at various stages of maturity. A particular area of investment focus is in precision medicine(s) and devices. An underlying commonality across deals is that UV Cap always takes an active and productive role in working with management. The family and team behind UV Cap are majority shareholders in Vetter Pharma, a +5.000 employee strong specialty Contract and Development Manufacturing Company (CDMO), manufacturing aseptic pharmaceutical products. Vetter Pharma counts the top 20 Pharma companies in the world among its customers. UV Cap is based in Ravensburg, Germany.

Press contact:

Martina Gutensohn
Email: martina.gutensohn@uvcap.de
T: +49 (0) 751 -1 49 04

About investiere.ch

Investiere is the leading European startup investment platform for qualified and institutional investors. Since its inception in 2010, Investiere has invested over EUR 120 million in European high-tech startups. To join Investiere’s growing international investor community, visit investiere.ch.

Press contact

Eugen Stamm
Communications Associate
Email: eugen.stamm@investiere.ch
T: +41 78 744 98 82