After an initial financing phase by Quattrocento since 2010, enabling its first PRIMO product dedicated to creating in vitro cell models to be launched in 2016, Alvéole has now achieved financial independence.
Thanks to this new fund-raising operation, Alvéole will be able to continue developing its innovations and enrich its teams with new talent.
Paris, October 16, 2018, 09.30 a.m. – Alvéole, a company specializing in tools for creating close to real-life cell environments for research laboratories, has announced today that it has completed its first €1 million third-party private investor fund-raising operation, thus confirming the solidity of its positioning.
After an initial financing phase by Quattrocento since 2010, enabling its first PRIMO product dedicated to creating in vitro cell models to be launched in 2016, Alvéole has now achieved financial independence. Thanks to this new fund-raising operation, Alvéole will be able to continue developing its innovations and enrich its teams with new talent.
Despite acknowledged national scientific and technological expertise, the path to success in the French Deep Tech “Life science Tools” sector is full of challenges: high development costs, a risk factor that is too high for institutional investors. Alvéole’s success, just two years after marketing its first product, is confirmation of the effectiveness of the business model implemented by its Company builder, Quattrocento, actively engaged in revitalizing France’s industrial fabric. Based on financing and creating solid SMEs, the model brings together academic researchers, French industrial partners and a network of investors involved in creating tomorrow’s gems.
Alvéole now has the attributes of a more robust company, thereby removing the obstacles generally attributed to start-ups: a technology whose main risks (control of performance, reproducibility, reliability) have been removed, units produced and available for sale, international laboratories that have already acquired the system and business partnerships with the multinationals of the sector. With more than 35 systems already sold worldwide, turnover multiplied by 6 since 2016 and a target of 1.5 million euros by the end of 2018, the bio-engineering technology developed by Alvéole is no longer proof of concept. The SME has been able to convince renowned laboratories[1], demonstrate its expertise in the highly innovative field of life sciences tools and today establish itself as the French company specializing in new in vitro models with its unique positioning.
The funds raised by the French SME of 12 people, combining multidisciplinary R&D skills with biologists, chemists and physicists, should make it possible to recruit new commercial profiles to support its development.
Alvéole will, at the same time, continue to develop its bio-engineering platform while preserving its vision of accessibility to as many biologists as possible, according to 3 main focuses:
“Our team’s multidisciplinary skills, attentive listening to our market and an offering in line with the specific and demanding needs of research, have been essential elements for defining a coherent positioning that is now recognized by the cellular biology scientific community. Quattrocento’s expertise in development and financing strategies has enabled us to achieve the status of a firmly-established company. The funds raised now allow us to reach the new milestone of financial independence, giving us the means to implement the additional human and material resources needed to speed up the dissemination of our offering to academic laboratories.”, Romuald Vally, CEO of Alvéole explained.
“We are delighted to have supported Alvéole from its founding to this stage of maturity where it is now firmly established in its market and is operationally independent. This raising of funds from third parties marks this change to independence.”, Bertrand Fourquet, President of Quattrocento added.
With 60% of sales made internationally and a US market that is particularly eager for new in vitro models, Alvéole also wants to strengthen its international presence over the next few months.
More reliable and closer to real-life cellular tests, eventually replacing the need for animal testing. A utopia? Not necessarily when we see the growth in demand from cell biology research laboratories over the last 10 years and the ever-increasing ethical problems raised by animal testing. Aware of the need for a paradigm shift, Alvéole launched PRIMO in 2016: a bio-engineering tool able to create tailored environments in the laboratory where cells (including induced stem cells) can behave as they do in the body and therefore be studied more reliably. By enabling cell biology researchers to study biological processes under conditions that mimic those observed in vivo, PRIMO accelerates scientific research while reducing the use of animal models and opens up new possibilities for tests that are more standardized for developing new pharmacological drugs.
PRIMO is a complete bioengineering platform consisting of an optical module connected to a microscope, software dedicated to producing cellular environments imitating in vivo conditions and a chemical reagent enabling the cells to interact with this environment. An integrated tools and services offering for academic research laboratories worldwide.
Alvéole is a Deep Tech company founded in 2010 by three researchers from the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) collaborating with Quattrocento, a ‘creator of Deep Tech companies in the life sciences field’ allowing academic researchers to transform their inventions into marketed products. The young company, headed by Romuald Vally, CEO since 2016, has 12 staff, combining multidisciplinary R&D skills with biologists, chemists and physicists. The company’s ambition is to become the benchmark for in vitro cell environment creation tools with more reliable models, thus contributing to reducing animal testing while accelerating scientific research.
Revitalizing France’s industrial fabric is a major economic challenge. This is why Quattrocento produces solid SMEs that export equipment for medical and biological research, through a combination of proximity with academic researchers, a network of French industrial partners and a network of involved investors. Quattrocento has already founded 7 companies, some of which have become SMEs like Alvéole, at various stages of development, hiring researchers and dealing with all the functions needed in a company, such as marketing, financing, industrialization as well as strategy and marketing.
Alvéole, Marketing Department
Marie-Charlotte MANUS
marie-charlotte.manus@alveolelab.com
+33 1 84 17 22 28
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[1] Alvéole’s clients include Institut Curie (France), CEA (France), University of Manchester (United Kingdom), McGill University (Canada), Karolinska Institute (Sweden), NIH (United States), FDA (United States), Stanford University (United States) and UNSW (Australia).