Raanana, Israel, September 2020; QART Medical completes follow-on investment round, led by Chartered Opus and joined by other existing, as well as new investors. Company was established to utilize advanced bio-photonics, to significantly improve the outcomes of ICSI (intra cytoplasmic sperm injection) treatments, a common type of IVF (in vitro fertilization) procedure, in which a single sperm cell is selected and manually injected into the female oocyte (i.e. egg).
Today, however, sperm cells are largely characterized by their motility and gross morphology, without the ability to analyze their inner contents in a quantitative way, since chemical cell staining is not allowed in human IVF. QART’s technology solves these problems by using holographic microscopy. QART system applies an established consensus criteria, like those provided by WHO (World Health Organization), to make many more of the sperm cells useful for the ICSI procedure, to identify whether a sperm cell complies with these criteria or not.
“We are very pleased with the progress made by QART Medical so far and intend to continue supporting the company in its endeavours to pursue its milestones and marketing targets in the coming few years” says Eyal Agmoni, Chairman of Chartered Group.
QART’s Technology was developed by Prof. Nathan T. Shaked from Tel Aviv University and funded by The Momentum Fund. QART licensed the technology from Ramot, Tel Aviv university’s technology transfer company.
“We believe we’re well posed to provide a long-sought improvement for the process of individual sperm cell selection for ICSI, and its clinical outcome” said Alon Shalev, co-founder and CEO of QART Medical.