Four life science startups from Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden were invited to pitch in front of 150+ attendance at the NOME Annual Meeting on November 23. After a tight race, Copenhagen-based Henlez wins the NOME Startup Competition 2021, and with that, secures a spot in the NOME Mentoring Program.
The NOME Annual Meeting is, as the name gives away, an annual event that gathers the leading experts and most promising startups within life science under one roof — this year, under the roof at Industriens Hus in Copenhagen.
A central part of the NOME Annual Meeting is the Startup Competition, where four of the most promising Nordic life science startups pitch their businesses and where the audience, many of them NOME mentors and NOME portfolio companies, vote for the winner.
This year’s winner is Henlez: a Copenhagen-based biotech company that develops disruptive and non-invasive treatments for follicular occlusion disorders such as acne vulgaris and hidradenitis suppurativa. By winning, Henlez secures a spot in NOME’s elite Mentoring Program, which includes 2 years of mentorship from three industry experts, as well as the NOME prize of 50 000 DKK.
Meet the Nordic finalists:
ADESANTE’s SurgeryVision (Finland): an AI-powered surgery planning solution that detects abnormalities from medical imaging data and presents those in XR. This stereoscopic 3D virtual model helps surgeons to make more precise planning of surgical procedures.
Bulbitech (Norway): offers clinicians and researchers a device that can perform multiple rapid neuro- ophthalmic eye examination tests to screen for ophthalmological and neurological conditions.
Henlez (Denmark): develops the first-in-class topical enzyme therapeutic Acteza. Acteza is non-invasive and indicated for any severity stage of hidradenitis suppurativa and other chronic, recurring acne-form diseases such as acne vulgaris.
Mevia (Sweden): improves medication outcomes through real-time data. The team is on a mission to enable higher levels of medication adherence and accurate data through intelligent solutions to provide improved wellness and efficiency for their users.
About NOME:
The Nordic Mentor Network for Entrepreneurship (NOME) is an elite Mentoring Program for Nordic startups working with therapeutics, medical devices, diagnostics, digital health, and industrial biotech. Since 2016, the ambition has been to propel selected startups into internationally renowned commercial successes by matching them with highly-skilled volunteer professionals.
NOME is funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation and driven by the partner organizations Accelerace (Denmark), Oslo Cancer Cluster Incubator and Aleap (Norway), Karolinska Institutet Innovations AB and Medicon Village (Sweden) as well as Vertical Acceleratorand Turku Science Park Ltd (Finland).