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Start-ups · Healthtech & Bio

IKAN Biotech

ikanbiotech.com ↗ ·Noáin ·Seed

IKAN Biotech, which traded as The Zebrafish Lab, is a Navarre-based biotechnology company. It developed and sold zebrafish in vivo models for preclinical research, working with pharmaceutical, biotech, nutraceutical, chemical and cosmetics companies on drug screening, and with clinicians on oncology. Its main technology was the zebrafish 'patient avatar': tumour cells from a patient biopsy were xenografted into zebrafish so that candidate treatments for colon and lung cancer could be compared in a few weeks, against months with mouse models. It was founded in 2015 at the CEIN business incubator in Noáin by the cousins Roberto Díez-Martínez and Rubén Díez Punzano. It raised about €2.4M in public and European funding, including a participating loan from SODENA. In September 2020 it closed a €750,000 round on Fellow Funders, led by XtartCube and Chamberí Ventures with 36 investors. The company won the Empresa del Año award at the Premio Tecnología Siglo XXI 2018, and its ZebraONCOfish project received a European Technology Award in 2019. The company is now in liquidation.

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