RUBYnanomed wins the HealthTech award in the Hong Kong EPiC startup competition

INL’s spin-off RUBYnanomed has won at the Health Tech track in the Elevator Pitch Competition 2020 (EPiC) organized by the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP), on the 6th of October 2020.

After just a 60-second presentation video, RUBYnanomed stood out from the 470 start-ups that applied from all over the world and were selected to be one of the Top 10 finalists. Over the 3-minute live pitch, RUBYnanomed convinced the panel and won in the Health Technologies category, bringing home a 16,000 USD prize. 

According to Lorena Diéguez, CEO of RUBYnanomed and the INL researcher leading the Precise Personalised HealthTech Research Cluster, “This was a great opportunity to receive exposure in the Tech ecosystem of Hong Kong that will certainly unlock new investment and collaboration prospects in Asia”.

RUBYnanomed’s technology enables early diagnosis of metastasis for non-invasive cancer monitoring, through liquid biopsy, by automatically isolating and classifying cancer cells in circulation. These circulating tumour cells, or CTCs, are responsible for the metastatic process, and their analysis provides real-time information about cancer progression, enabling the prediction of disease aggressiveness and resistance to therapy.  

The EPiC competition, organized by Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation, is a tech startup challenge drawing hundreds of brilliant minds from all around the globe in four categories (Health Technologies, Artificial Intelligence & Robotics, FinTech, and Smart Cities). Starting from 2016, this international competition has been attracting increasing attention and has become a highly anticipated annual occasion ever since.