Incubated at University of Luxembourg Incubator, startup Megeno focuses on continuous personalized disease prevention based on the genome. The team believes that a person’s DNA serves as a prerequisite for efficient health management. Here’s more on the company.
by: Silicon Luxembourg
photo: University of Luxembourg incubator
featured: Megeno’s team
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What is your startup about?
Megeno is developing a novel approach for disease prevention and health maintenance, applicable to the whole population. We combine whole genome sequence data with other health information to personalize prevention and make it more targeted. Precision medicine technologies, developed for diagnosis and treatment of patients, are applied to disease prevention in healthy individuals. This helps in building a promising new path to increase our healthy lifespans.
How did you come up with the idea?
Several years ago, during a visit to the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) and the Ministry of Economy, we realized the focus and ambition of the country to shape the use of genome-based digital technologies for health care. So, in 2017, I – Dr. Erich Felber – took up the challenge, moved from Munich to Belval and provided seed funding for Megeno. However, it was only with the current team of employees and co-founders that we eventually developed the concepts that we are confident will work in the European context.
“We intend to provide Personalized Health Surveillance for millions of individuals across Europe and in selected international markets.”
What are your products/services?
Personalized Health Surveillance will be a subscription service allowing individuals to identify disease predispositions and early disease manifestations through genetic analysis, family medical history and ongoing “at-home” health monitoring using questionnaires, biological samples and wearables. We want our customers to enjoy increased healthy life years, unencumbered by diseases that are preventable or typically only diagnosed at later stages. Megeno collaborates with leading clinical geneticists to translate genetic information into ethically responsible and cost-efficient personalized prevention.
What is your business model?
We intend to provide Personalized Health Surveillance for millions of individuals across Europe and in selected international markets. Our services will extend over long time periods, calling for a subscription model. We design our solutions to be highly scalable with low marginal costs.
“In the future, newly developed ethical and regulatory frameworks will allow us to also provide direct-to-consumer prevention services.”
Who are your clients?
Initially, we will be providing services for hospitals, sequencing centres and clinical geneticists who wish to support sequenced individuals in making the best possible use of their genome information. These institutional clients give patients access to their data, so they may use it as a lifelong resource and involve their relatives when appropriate. We will also be supporting national health care systems and public health agencies in using genome data for preventive purposes. In the future, newly developed ethical and regulatory frameworks will allow us to also provide direct-to-consumer prevention services.
What are the next steps in your development?
We have built the first components of our services and are now working with pilot partners. Clinical showcases will involve leading institutions and experts in Europe. Successful execution will provide the basis to attract financing for increasing both the scope of our services across different medical specialties and the scale to handle a large number of individuals.
