FluoSphera Secures €1.23 Million To Scale Their Human-Based Drug Testing Platform

FluoSphera, the Swiss biotech startup redefining how new drugs are tested for safety and efficacy, has raised €1.23 million (CHF 1.15 million). The funding round was led by Soulmates Ventures and a Swiss business angel, with participation from IndieBio New York.

Already working with international pharma partners and research labs, FluoSphera will use the funding to scale commercial collaborations, grow its business development team, and expand its AI and automation capabilities for large-scale imaging analysis.

Making Drug Development Easier

Developing a new drug takes on average 10 to 15 years, and costs between $2 and $3 billion, according to Deloitte’s 2023 Pharmaceutical Innovation Report. Yet, despite these investments, over 90% of drug candidates still fail in clinical trials, making drug development inefficient and costly while delaying investment in potentially life-changing medicines. In oncology, success rates are even below 5% (Nature Reviews Drug Discovery).

Most of these failures happen because preclinical models cannot accurately predict how compounds behave in the human body. Traditional 2D cell cultures can’t model organ interactions, and animal models fail to fully recapitulate human biology. As a result, key toxicities are often missed, leading to wasted time, sunk R&D costs, and delayed access to life-saving treatments.

To address this, FluoSphera has developed a multiplexed in vitro platform that predicts drug effects in a human-like way, allowing drug developers to identify the most promising molecules earlier. Unlike traditional methods that test tissues in isolation or rely on complex organ-on-chip systems, FluoSphera’s patented platform combines up to six or seven human tissue models in a single well, using proprietary fluorescent coding to track each one independently.

In other words, the platform lets researchers observe how different organs interact and evaluate both efficacy and potential side effects in a single experiment, before animal or human testing begins.

“We’re building the next generation of preclinical tools, not just to get new medicine faster to market and at a lower cost, but also to enhance the quality of drug discovery processes. By improving human relevance and reducing reliance on animal models, we help our partners bring safer, more effective treatments to patients faster,” said Dr. Clélia Bourgoint, CEO and Co-founder of FluoSphera.

Leveraging Partnerships To Drive Research

FluoSphera already works with biotech and pharmaceutical companies, with strong traction in antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) testing. The company also collaborates with Revvity, a leader in High-Throughput Screening (HTS). Drug developers using FluoSphera’s technology can save between $100 to 500 million per molecule, by reducing both developmental risks as well as clinical and time-to-market costs. The platform also helps developers align with evolving regulations, such as the FDA’s Modernization Act 3.0, a proposed U.S. framework that encourages non-animal testing by validating New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) for preclinical research

Hynek Sochor, Founder and Managing Partner at Soulmates Ventures, said, “FluoSphera stood out to us from the start for its exceptional founders and groundbreaking science. As the pharmaceutical industry transitions away from animal testing, the need for reliable human-relevant models is immense. FluoSphera is opening a multi-billion-dollar opportunity by giving drug developers the means to innovate faster, safer, and more ethically. It represents a completely new approach to developing the next generation of medicines.”

With this new funding, FluoSphera will strengthen its business development efforts to scale commercial activities with pharmaceutical companies and CROs, expand platform integration into drug development pipelines, and advance its AI layer for image analysis. The company will focus on growth in the US and EU, with early steps into the Asian market underway.

Looking ahead, FluoSphera aims to expand access to advanced human tissue modelling and establish itself as the industry standard for systemic in vitro testing across pharma, biotech, and academia. Its goal is to enable faster, safer drug development while significantly reducing reliance on animal testing. In the long term, the company’s platform could also help bring precision medicine closer to reality by tailoring drug testing to different population subgroups.

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