Berlin-based, clinical operations automation platform, Yendou, has raised €1.2 million in a pre-seed round of investment, intending to speed up clinical trial operations and reduce the time it takes to create novel cancer treatments.
Investor Collaboration
With assistance from Heartfelt, Infinite Fund, and several angel investors from the pharmaceutical sector, notably Meri Beckwith, co-founder of the recently established CRO rival Lindus Health, the investment round was spearheaded by b2venture, a renowned VC firm.
Yendou has quickly gained the interest and adoption of more than 1,200 clinicians across 46 countries since its launch. Furthermore, the demand highlights the platform’s effectiveness and global appeal. Moreover, in response to this achievement, Yendou launched a closed beta offering on its platform for pharmaceutical businesses. Pharmaceutical and biotech businesses may easily connect, choose, and onboard clinical trial sites for Phase II and Phase III oncology trials with this solution.
Zina Sarif, CEO and co-founder of Yendou said:
“We like to think of ourselves as Salesforce for R&D teams in the life sciences, offering a unique value proposition by putting a curated pool of qualified clinical leads at their fingertips. We are developing a knowledge automation platform to help clinical researchers eliminate tedious tasks, enabling groups to compile data and expedite the delivery of clinical trials to clinics.”
The Yendou team has developed a system that thoroughly understands the issues surrounding clinical trial operations.
Related Content: Embedded Insurance – Embea Rais €4M for Pan-EU Platform
Challenges Addressed
Treatable diseases claim the lives of 41 million people annually. Additionally, it typically takes 12 years and $2 billion on average to get a novel medication to the market. Notably, a third of the time needed to complete a clinical study is related to the selection of the clinical locations alone. Many pharmaceutical businesses still collect and maintain clinical data using spreadsheets and other software programs, which are largely manual operations. Consequently, the inability of these instruments to communicate with each other seamlessly is a serious problem. Manual updates are frequently needed for other products when crucial data about a clinic or employee changes in one system, and this doesn’t happen very often.
Concerns about patient recruitment frequently obscure the important matter of clinic recruitment in cancer clinical trials, which Yendou’s unique business strategy addresses.
Zina further states:
“Successful patient recruitment depends on selecting the right clinic. Data from Yendou helps pharmaceutical companies choose the best clinics for their trials in an efficient manner.”
Johanna Junkermann, an investment manager at the VC firm b2venture, said:
“The entire Yendou team’s ability to create market traction right away pleased us. Moreover, Zina’s broad industry network and in-depth comprehension of the issue put her and her team in a unique position to spearhead the development of a product that will redefine a category for the pharmaceutical and biotech industries.”
