BforCure

An innovative deeptech company created in 2018, BforCure (BfC) has developed the first solution enabling non expert users to rapidly and readily characterize microbiota everywhere and at any time. Microbiota are complex communities of numerous interdependent microorganismal species whose status and dynamics have far reaching consequences in health, wellness and aging, as well as in many agrifood and industrial processes. BfC's solution is a powerful alternative solution to the current time consuming or costly culture-based and metagenomic-based solutions.

This innovative solution has massive applications in 3 contexts:

1. when speed is critical to save lives like for the identification of a bioterrorist attack
2. when the test results have to be delivered during a consultation like during a pregnancy checkup
3. when the test is used to trigger an act of purchase like for the selling of a personalized skin care.

Altogether, applications where our solution will be of interest represent a new market of more than €10B.

This revolution has been made possible thanks to a combination of 4 breakthrough proprietary technologies:

• Fastgene: a microfluidic engine powering the fastest DNA amplification in the world with a record time of less than 5 minutes (Houssin T. et al., 2016; Lab Chip., 16, 1401). Fastgene is a winner of the French 2030 Global Innovation Contest.
• The High Content PCR: a technology allowing to multiply by 3 the number of DNA sequences that can be distinguished in a single test..
• The Molecular Petri Dish: the first universal tool which analyzes DNA features of the microbiota at the single cell level in 10 minutes. The microorganisms forming a microbiota are concentrated and scattered inside a gel. But instead of letting these microorganisms slowly grow and multiply to form visible colonies as in a classical Petri dish, which takes hours and even days, well chosen fragments of their genomes are Fastgene-amplified, yielding DNA colonies that allow the real-time and precise identification of each microorganism. This process thus combines the advantages of the Petri dish with the power of Fastgene and hcPCR.
• And Smart Droppers: a set of easy to use, affordable and versatile sample pretreatment tools for non biologist users.

We combined all these patented technologies into a single device named Chronos. It can analyze the genetic material of each microorganism present in a microbiota in just 10 min and at the single cell level. A proprietary artificial intelligence framework analyzes and interprets the generated data, so that the operator can take the right decision in a timely manner.

Our business model is a combination of technology licensing and direct B2B2C sales.

• For strategic markets like biodefense, beverages and water markets, we sell devices and consumables to industrial and laboratories who carry out the analyses for their end-users. Gross margins in these cases are above 80%. These markets are technically very demanding but not regulated, which helps us innovate faster and develop our technologies.
• For other markets, including medical diagnostic and wellness which requires a lot of capex, we aim to license our technologies to third party companies.

In the past, we have commercialized our Chronos device and tests for applications in medical in vitro diagnostic and biothreat defense. In these markets, we have already sold 30 devices and more than 20 thousand tests which have generated more than €4M turnover.

Now, we are focussing on the development of microbiota tests for beverage production, water quality, agriculture and perinatal markets. In parallel, we are discussing the licensing of 2 of our technologies with large device manufacturers.

In the future, we want to expand applications of our technologies with major partners to other markets like cancer diagnostics.

On the financial side, we have so far raised €7M of private equity and €18M of public funds. Finally, we have earned 7 prizes, including the 1st prize for innovation awarded by the French medical biology union last year.

BfC is a small highly integrated company with 35 employees working from research to production and commercialization of every piece of the value chain, including device, consumables, reagents, data and AI algorithms. It is managed by a talented team of experts in industry, startups and medical sciences with outstanding careers. We also team with dedicated networks of KOL and high-level partners for the development of each application. We are based in Montreuil, with all the infrastructures needed to achieve developments and production scale-up. It has been ISO13485 certified and fully compliant with the EU medical regulation since 2021

Now, our dedicated team has all the necessary assets to generate a high impact worldwide on health and environment, and a high reward, by creating the leader of rapid on-site microbiota analysis. So, now is the perfect time to invest in BfC to unleash the power of microbiota!