ShanX Medtech, a Dutch diagnostics company, has raised €24 million ($28 million) to develop an ultra-rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing platform. The company’s initial go-to-market strategy will focus on urinary tract infections as a women’s health application, with the platform offering potential across a wider range of clinical indications.
Current diagnostic methods require days to determine which antibiotics will be effective against a specific infection, often leading clinicians to prescribe broad-spectrum antibiotics before test results are available. This contributes to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and can delay effective treatment. ShanX Medtech’s platform delivers antimicrobial susceptibility results within an hour directly from patient samples.
The funding combines a €15 million ($17.5 million) oversubscribed seed round led by Borski Fund, NextGen Ventures, CbusineZ, Brabantse Ontwikkelings Maatschappij (BOM), and Invest-NL, alongside an €8.85 million ($10.4 million) contract from the European Commission’s Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA).
“We founded ShanX Medtech because of a single patient story, one that revealed how much is at stake when diagnostic results arrive too late,” said Dr. Sophia E. Shanko, Founder and CEO of ShanX Medtech. “Our vision is to equip every clinician with the ability to act decisively, guided by diagnostic evidence in real-time. This funding brings us significantly closer to delivering ultra-rapid AST directly to both laboratory and point-of-care environments – faster, simpler, and more accessible than ever before.”
Simone Brummelhuis, Partner at Borski Fund, said: “Following an extensive market analysis of innovations addressing antimicrobial resistance, ShanX’s technology clearly emerged as best-in-class. While the company’s initial go-to-market strategy focuses on a well-defined women’s health application in urinary tract infections, the underlying platform offers substantial potential across a wide range of clinical indications. We are proud to support Sophia and her exceptional team in realizing their ambitious vision. The oversubscribed financing round, together with multiple multi-million-euro commercial contracts, underscores both the strength of the technology and the founder’s proven commercial execution.”
Paul Vernooij, Investment Manager at Brabant Development Agency (BOM), said: “Antimicrobial resistance represents one of the most critical unmet needs in global healthcare, with few effective solutions available today. ShanX Medtech introduces a highly innovative technology that contributes preventively to global health. As an early-stage investor, BOM is proud to take this next step alongside such a pioneering company.”
The platform uses novel chemistry to monitor microbial metabolism with minimal user involvement. The company says it is designed for both laboratory and point-of-care settings.
The funding will support final development, clinical validation, regulatory approval, and commercial launch.
