QART (Quantitative Assisted Reproductive Technologies) Medical, is a clinical-stage MedTech company, addressing the global infertility epidemic.

Tel Aviv, Israel, March 19, 2019, Tel Aviv University (TAU), Technology Innovation Momentum Fund, managed by Ramot, TAU’s Business Engagement Center and Chartered Investment Managers, a SEA-based investment management fund announced the completion of an investment round in QART Medical.

QART Medical was founded by Prof Natan T. Shaked from the Department of Biomedical Engineering in Tel-Aviv University and Alon Shalev, an experienced MedTech entrepreneur, inventor and executive. The Company was founded around the assets of an eight-years R&D program led by Prof Shaked’s team. The current investment round into QART Medical was led by Chartered, and the Momentum Fund of Tel-Aviv University, and joined by a group of angel investors.

“QART Medical is positioned to disrupt the global fertility services industry with the introduction of a revolutionary solution using advanced & safe bio-photonics technology, promising high clinical success rates. The global need for a better solution for couples in need is ever-growing, and we couldn’t be more pleased to be part of the state-of-the-art solution QART Medical created.” says Eyal Agmoni, Chairman of Chartered Group.

QART Medical was established to utilize advanced bio-photonics, to significantly improve the outcomes of current IVF (in vitro fertilization) treatments, one of the most common of which is called ICSI (intra cytoplasmic sperm injection), in which a single sperm cell is selected and manually injected into the female oocyte (i.e. egg).

“Nati (Prof. Shaked) and me feel privileged to have been trusted with the noble goal, and resources, to bring to life a potentially ground-breaking modality, addressing the great challenges of male infertility” said Alon Shalev, co-founder and CEO of QART Medical.

QART’s product pipeline is based upon a holographic microscopy workstation and a disposable cartridge that should enable highly informative and automated selection of single sperm cells during ICSI. QART system can apply established consensus criteria, like those provided by the WHO (World Health Organization) guidelines from stained sperm cells. Currently, these guidelines are mostly not usable in the IVF clinic, as they require chemical staining of the sperm cells, which is not allowed in human fertilization. “Using holographic microscopy, we are able to provide virtual staining, and see the sperm cells like they are stained during ICSI, but without using actual staining. We are also able to provide, in real-time for mobile sperm cells, a new set of quantitative clinically relevant parameters, such as the individual sperm mass and volume, which were not attainable to the clinician so far. This is the ‘Q’ of QART, quantitative assisted reproduction technologies, and we are the pioneers in this market.” said Prof. Shaked, who also functions as the co-founder and chief scientist of the company.

“This continuous cooperation with Chartered Investment Managers and the investments made by it, is an acknowledgment to the value that the Momentum Fund brings to early stage academic innovations. We believe that this joined investment will enable a real revolution in the field of fertility, an area of great source of emotional stress to many young couples around the world”, said Shlomo Nimrodi, Ramot CEO and the MF GP.

Alon Shalev, QART CEO and Prof. Natan T. Shaked, the inventor, Chief Scientist and co-founder

About QART Medical

QART (Quantitative Assisted Reproductive Technologies) Medical, a clinical-stage MedTech company, addressing the global infertility epidemic. The Company develops a breakthrough solution for highly informative characterization and selection of sperm cells for in-vitro fertilization (IVF), aiming to create a new and better gold standard in the ART market.  The QART system aims to improve current success rates of Intra-Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI) by:

• Quantitatively characterizing the morphology and contents of individual sperm cells with 3D topographic imaging
• Providing quantitative DNA integrity information, on a cell-by-cell basis
• Automatically sorting a semen sample according to objective consensus criteria

QART intends to commercially launch its system – a workstation and disposable cartridges – in year 2020, and commence marketing to fertility clinics, aiming to significantly improve pregnancy rates in ICSI procedures (for more information, see: www.qart-medical.com)

 

About Chartered Group

Chartered Opus is a production platform for investment products combining structural and technological innovations to a new methodology in Structured Products. Chartered Opus is the preferred investment vehicle for the Chartered Group’s High-Tech division. In the past two years Chartered Group grew its high-tech portfolio to about 20 companies – all with disruptive technologies, including being the anchor investor for TAU Venture at the Tel Aviv University. For more information, visit https://www.charteredgroup.com/

About Ramot and the Momentum fund

Ramot is the Business Engagement Center at Tel Aviv University, Israel’s largest research and teaching university. Rooted in both academic and corporate arenas, Ramot is uniquely positioned to cultivate the special relationships between these two compelling worlds, creating win-win connections that support fertile, ground breaking research while providing companies with discoveries that give them a crucial competitive edge. The Momentum Fund, is the most recent of Ramot’s funds to become operational. This fund offers around one-million-dollar funding for transnational research technologies at Tel Aviv University in a wide range of fields, including pharmaceuticals, healthcare, high-tech and the physical sciences.

For more information, please contact:

Alon Shalev, CEO QART Medical Ltd. Email: AlonShalev@qart-medical.com www.qart-medical.com

Maya Kotler, Head of Marketing Ramot at Tel Aviv University +972.52.605 7144 Email: maya.kotler@ramot.org