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Kugelmeiers

Posted on 29. September 202629. September 2026 by Katharina Heilmaier

Growth Capital for Kugelmeiers

Patented 3D Cell Culture Platform for Personalised Cancer Therapy

Societal Challenge

Current 3D cell culture models do not replicate the complexity of human tissues well enough. This leads to high failure rates in the development of drugs and cell therapies. Standardisation and scalability are lacking, which makes the path to the clinic harder, and results are not reproducible enough to set new standards of care. Every year, 20 million people worldwide are newly diagnosed with cancer, and millions of patients are treated without knowing whether their therapy will work. In type 1 diabetes, which affects 8.4 million people worldwide, islet transplantation needs three transplantations instead of one. The global 3D cell culture consumables market is growing by around 22.5% per year.

Solution

Kugelmeiers has developed SP5D®, a patented technology that makes it possible to produce spheroids and organoids in a standardised, reproducible, scalable and physiological way, for research and clinical use. Any cell type can form so-called Mini-Organ Avatars of a few hundred cells each, the building blocks for personalised and regenerative medicine. For cancer, this makes it possible to screen several drugs for the individual patient before treatment starts.

The Team Behind Kugelmeiers

Kugelmeiers was founded in 2015 as a spin-off from the University of Zurich by Dr. med. Patrick Kugelmeier and Sandra H. Kugelmeier-Heller. Patrick Kugelmeier is a surgeon and invented the Sphericalplate SP5D®. Sandra Kugelmeier-Heller is a transplantation specialist. The board includes Meelis Reidla, who brings 30 years of experience in the healthcare industry, including with Bayer, Pfizer and GSK. Their vision: medicine guided by health rather than disease.

Curious? Get in touch with Kai Wagner for more information about the investment opportunity.