The company is aiming to support rapid and accurate urinary tract infection diagnosis, and combat antibiotic resistance.
UTIlizer AB (UTI-lizer), a Swedish HealthTech company in point-of-need diagnostics, has raised just over 7 million SEK to commercialize its unique urinary tract infection (UTI) product for decentralizing UTI testing! The investors include ALMI Invest, together with life science angel investors and the Propel Capital.
UTIs are painful, affect 150 million people globally1 and are the 2nd most common prescription for antibiotics. Today’s UTI tests need experienced users and costly equipment and therefore take a long time to result. Therefore, clinicians often start treatment without test results because the patient is in pain. As a result, antibiotic treatment is inappropriate which leads to the development of antibiotic resistance (one of the biggest threats to human health according to WHO2).
“Thanks to the support of our investors, UTI-lizer can commercialize an innovative and rapid point-of-need test for urinary tract infections, thus meeting the needs of both patients and the healthcare system. The company’s expertise in life sciences, combined with a wide network and entrepreneurial spirit, will be invaluable to advancing the solution. Our first product is a game-changer in managing UTIs and the first one in a series of other applications.” says Sofia Bertling, CEO at UTI-lizer.
The funding will finance a scaled production process, support a multicenter clinical study for IVDR/CE certification and accelerate marketing efforts. To accomplish these objectives, the team will expand by hiring a production manager and a marketing professional.
“UTI-lizer’s products have the potential to provide a significantly faster, cheaper and more accurate diagnosis of suspected bacterial infections, e.g. urinary tract infections, by enabling the miniaturized culture of bacteria at healthcare centers, and eventually at home. The need for this is large and global, and the product is scalable, so we see enormous potential in the company”, says Gustav Notander, Investment Manager at Almi Invest.
For more information, please contact:
Sofia Bertling, CEO
Phone: +46 (0)708 977577
Email: sofia.bertling@utilizer.se
About UTI-lizer
UTIlizer AB is a Swedish Healthech company in point-of-need diagnostics, founded in 2021 as a spin-off from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. UTI-lizer has miniaturized culture-based bacterial detection in a dipstick format. Their first product is a test for diagnosing urinary tract infections (UTIs) detecting and quantifying bacteria in urine at the clinically relevant range. This can be done without costly laboratory instruments and the result can be read using a mobile phone camera. The major advantage of this diagnostic test is that it enables an untrained operator to detect urinary tract infections at the point of need. Using the same technology, UTI-lizer is also developing antibiotic susceptibility tests (AST) focused on markets with a high prevalence of antibiotic resistance.
