MaxWell Biosystems secures CHF 4 million in a Series A round with Sensirion Holding AG

MaxWell Biosystems, a Zurich, Switzerland-based manufacturer of products for the pharma industry, announced securing a series A CHF 4M ($4.5M) capital funding round.

The money was raised from strategic investor Sensirion Holding AG and included contributions from existing shareholders.

Matthias Streiff, Sensor Innovation at Sensirion, will join as a new board member.

MaxWell Biosystems, founded in 2016 as a spinoff from ETH by CEO Urs Frey, aspires to help players in the pharmaceutical industry to run functional drug screenings targeting the brain at a higher throughput. The company provides high-content electrophysiology platforms that advance scientific discovery and accelerate drug discovery for neurodegenerative diseases. Its first product, MaxOne, is a high-density microelectrode (HD-MEA) system with thousands of tiny electrodes simultaneously sensing the small electrical signals of neuronal cells.

Targeted at academic and research laboratories, the technology allows for investigating the activity of cells in vitro at network-, cellular, and subcellular levels. The launch of MaxTwo, a multiwell HD-MEA platform, increases the throughput of performing cell-based assays to 6- and 24-well plates catering to pharmaceutical and biotech companies, as well as contract research organisations.