Cirqle Biomedical completed a $1.8M pre-seed capital investment round.

Cirqle Biomedical, a Copenhagen, Denmark-based startup working on a novel non-hormonal contraceptive technology,  announced that it has secured $1.8M in capital investment.

The money was provided by Novo Nordisk Foundation’s BioInnovation Institute (BII) and San Francisco-based Rhia Ventures and will be used for pre-clinical development of its next generation contraceptive product.

Cirqle Biomedical, founded in 2018 and led by CEO Frederik Petursson Madsen and Thomas Crouzier (Chief Science Officer), developed OUI, a technology aimed for women that are demanding non-hormonal products with fewer side-effects to manage their fertility.

The technology, developed in a lab at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, leverages the natural barrier properties of cervical mucus, as the company develops a topically-applied biopolymer that makes cervical mucus impenetrable to sperm cells throughout a woman’s cycle. This approach enables a potentially groundbreaking product that provides protection instantly and for extended periods without the systemic side-effects known from hormonal contraceptives.