London-based Sava Technologies, a startup pioneering real-time molecular health monitoring, has secured $19M (approximately €16.6M) in Series A funding led by Balderton Capital and Pentland Ventures.
“Understanding what’s going on in our bodies is the first step to improving our health,” says James Wise, Partner at Balderton. “Sava’s innovation has the potential to democratise access to glucose monitoring, as well as many other biomarkers, making them more practical for the millions of people who need them but can’t afford or tolerate the current options. Beyond diabetes, which alone is one of the greatest health challenges of our time, their platform opens the door to an entirely new era of personalised health monitoring.”
New investors, including Norrsken VC and JamJar Investments, as well as others — Italian Founders Fund, Athletico Ventures, and Exceptional Ventures, also participated in the round.
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The latest round brings Sava’s total funding to $32M (approximately €28M), with backing from leading VCs, returning angel investors, as well as funding from the EU and UK Governments.
Fund utilisation
The company will use the new capital to further expand its team, advance automated manufacturing capabilities to reach target launch volumes, and accelerate the clinical validation of its microsensor technology.
Additionally, the UK company is planning to accelerate regulatory approval and commercialisation of its next-generation wearable. The company’s team has rapidly grown to over 60+ people, including experts behind Abbott and Dexcom’s market-leading CGMs.
At present, only 1 per cent of people with diabetes use CGMs, yet this group generates over $11B in annual sales, growing 10 per cent year-on-year.
Existing devices are often painful, expensive, and inaccessible.
Here’s where Sava’s device promises to transform diabetes care and expand adoption of CGMs by offering a pain-free, cost-effective, and highly scalable alternative.
Sava: Preventative and personalised healthcare
Founded in 2019 by Imperial College London bioengineers Renato Circi and Rafaël Michali, Sava’s mission is to build the technological foundation for preventative and personalised healthcare.
The team has developed a multi-molecule biosensor capable of detecting biomarkers just beneath the skin, in real-time.
This proprietary technology is powering their first product – a pain-free CGM that streamlines molecular insights in real-time to your phone, at a fraction of the cost of current alternatives.
Accurate glucose reading during trials
Early results from the first 25 patients show that Sava’s technology can provide accurate glucose readings for up to 10 days of continuous wear.
Sava’s sensing platform mainly tracks glucose but can also detect other molecules.
This allows users to monitor several health markers in real-time easily, leading to a future of personalised and preventative healthcare.
“Glucose is only the beginning”, says Renato Circi, co-founder and co-CEO of Sava. “We have built a modular platform, capable of multi-molecule sensing. New molecules will create new use cases. What we’re building here is not just a device, but a whole new technological foundation for personalised healthcare, where anyone can use a biosensor to understand their health in real-time, at a molecular level.
The trial was developed with input from diabetes experts and regulators and will help with future regulatory submissions and Sava’s important study planned for next year.
“This clinical trial marks a pivotal moment not just for Sava, but for the future of biosensing and personalised healthcare,” says Rafaël Michali, co-founder and co-CEO of Sava.
“The data generated so far has shown that our technology has the potential to match the performance of leading CGMs in the market today, without the invasiveness or high cost of filament-based systems. It paves the way for a completely novel approach to biosensing that can redefine the way we approach not only chronic disease management, but any health goal,” adds Michali.
