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Elkstone, a wealth management firm that for the past decade has invested privately at the seed stage in future unicorns such as Flipdish and LetsGetChecked, has launched its inaugural VC fund with the backing of the state's Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF) and Enterprise Ireland (EI). The €100 million fund claims around 250 limited partners (LPs) in total, including a host of undisclosed business people from Ireland.

Lifeline Ventures typically invests at the angel and seed stage, with some follow-on investments in the Series A realm. While "angel" usually refers to wealthy individuals investing with their own cash, in this instance the company means that it sometimes backs companies at a super-early stage, before they have anything meaningful to show from a product perspective. Such investments have included mixed reality headset maker Varjo and smart ring maker Oura, which recently claimed a valuation of $2.55 billion.

The company is building an atlas of cancer progression to help research hospitals/pharma test experimental drugs and to help clinicians evaluate potential treatment options for each patient to improve outcomes. Pear Bio's technology is applicable across solid tumors, and it is currently working on a pipeline of biomarker-negative cancers, with triple-negative breast cancer as the lead indication.

Proxy's digital identity signal technology, stored on mobile devices, replaces the multitude of keys, cards, badges, apps, and passwords and is designed to enhance data privacy in an increasingly decentralized world. Proxy has been in stealth mode, working to advance its biometrically-linked digital technology from mobile phones to wearables. As part of the acquisition, ŌURA will bring on key full-time employees from Proxy, including its founders.

DiogenX is a biotech company focused on regenerating insulin-producing beta cells for the treatment of diabetes. Its lead program is focused on modulating the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway to regenerate pancreatic insulin-producing beta cells to offer a disease-modifying therapy for type 1 diabetes. It is currently in preclinical development. Backers included Roche Venture Fund, Eli Lilly and Company, Omnes, Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund, JDRF T1D Fund, and Adbio partners.

The global healthy eating platform Lifesum has unveiled a sleep tracking feature, which will allow its users to understand how their dietary choices impact their sleep patterns - and vice versa. The feature is made possible in partnership with Finland's ŌURA, the company behind the smart ring that delivers personalized health data, insights, and daily guidance -- and will build on their integration of Health Connect by Android to give Lifesum users another important layer of health data to track.

The company's Biolytica NEXUS health data platform is dubbed a revolutionary AI-driven analytics platform that aggregates, visualizes and analyzes a whole raft of data -- including genomics, blood, microbiome and epigenetic biomarkers, wearable devices, lifestyle data and more. Biolytica will use the funds to broaden its research and development efforts, scale its services to reach a wider client base and further collaborate with professionals in personalized and preventive healthcare.

The study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that ChatGPT might actually be quite successful in providing high-quality, empathetic answers to patient questions during an era in which doctors and nurses are too busy to do so. John Ayers, a public health researcher at the University of California San Diego led the study, comparing two sets of written responses to real-world patient questions. One set was written by physicians, the other by ChatGPT. The patient questions were sourced from Reddit's AskDocs subreddit.

The company has announced a €7m extension to its Series A led by the Singapore-based global VC MassMutual Ventures. The new capital will be used to increase the commercialization of HelloBetter's digital therapeutics (DTx) products in Germany, as well as for further expanding in Europe and the United States.

Ciliatech is specialized in ophthalmology and its new class of implant designed to address the need to treat glaucoma durably and with zero adverse effects. The CID (Cilio-scleral Inter-positioning Device) implant aims to reduce intraocular pressure (IOP) without penetrating the anterior chamber or creating subconjunctival filtration, thus overcoming serious complications and shortcomings of other glaucoma surgical techniques. As CID is inserted between only two areas of the eye (between the ciliary body and the sclera), it offers the advantage of unlocking the natural uveoscleral pathway without altering the anterior segment of the eye.