Artiman Ventures
Akhil Saklecha
Managing Director
Ascendia Pharmaceuticals, LLC
Ascendia is a specialty pharmaceutical company dedicated to developing enhanced formulations of existing drug products, and enabling formulations for pre-clinical and clinical stage drug candidates. We use our nano-particle technologies and expertise to improve the bioavailability of poorly water soluble compounds.
At Ascendia, our core business is to develop proprietary product formulations for poorly water soluble drugs in order to bring value to our pharmaceutical company partners. We provide practical, customized formulation solutions that enable advancement of compounds from discovery to clinical testing. We offer rapid and cost-effective formulation technology screening services for poorly water soluble drugs through the utilization of our multiple nano-particle technologies. We provide trial formulations suitable for initial animal studies, toxicology studies and Phase I clinical trials using nano-emulsion, amorphous solid dispersion, and particle size reduction approaches. We conduct development program support for novel life-cycle management products based on these technology platforms.

Aspect Biosystems
Aspect Biosystems uses proprietary bioprinting and cell culture technologies to create high quality living 3D human tissues. We aim to improve the pre-clinical drug discovery process by providing pharmaceutical companies and researchers with functional living tissues that better predict the human response to drugs. Our testing platforms will enable pharmaceutical customers to identify failed drugs earlier in the development pipeline, before expensive clinical trials begin. Aspect Biosystem’s long-term vision is to create human tissues on demand for multiple applications including cosmetics-testing, personalized medicine, diagnostics and regenerative medicine.
Mr Simon Beyer
Co-founderAsset Management Ventures
Richard Simoni
Managing Partner
ASTEC
ASTEC is a Tokyo-based, accelerator-type investment firm focused on company creation and seed-stage investment. We have been solely investing in Japan but now plans to launch a new fund, together with Tokyo-based FinTech Global Capital, that also invests in other geography leveraging our Japan connection, both academic inventions and pharmaceutical companies. ASTEC deeply gets involved with the management of its portfolio companies and represents some of them for BD activities.
Astia Angels
Karen Drexler
FounderSharon Vosmek
CEOSara Frankel
MemberATEM Capital
Alexey Afanasiev
Executive PartnerAnton Gopka
CEO General PartnerElena Ikhsanova
COO General PartnerAvisa Pharma Inc.
Avisa Pharma™ Inc., (AVISA) is a Point Of Care, In-Vivo Platform Technology Company With An Innovative, Integrated System For The Rapid Detection And Monitoring Of Respiratory Diseases. A paradigm shift away from lab based In Vitro testing; an In Vivo, point of care, breath test that measures the whole lung, live organisms, not a single culture sample in a petri dish or PCR;for non sputum producers - the only test that can detect lung bacteria without a sputum culture; A razor/razorblade Model to Drive Rapid Market Penetration and Growth.
Focused initially on respiratory health, the clinical study strategy is to pursue fastest route to regulatory approvals, the detection of Tuberculosis (TB), followed by Healthcare Acquired Pneumonia (HCAP), Ventilator Associated Pneumonia (VAP), Cystic Fibrosis (CF) and COPD. These applications have the potential to help save millions of lives and millions of dollars in healthcare costs each year, and a multi billion $ market opportunity.
$6 million Series A1 Preferred round underway, $4 million received from current investors exercising preemptive rights. Q1 2015 Avisa will be launching a 40 patient pilot TB study in South Africa.