The 2019 Lyfebulb-Helsinn Innovation Award

Mihir is passionate about addressing global health disparities with rapid commercialization of scientific discoveries and innovation. After seeing his mother-in-law go through breast cancer, he founded UE LifeSciences to enable affordable and scalable access to early diagnosis of cancer, for women everywhere. UE LifeSciences has developed the iBreastExam, a US FDA-cleared, hand-held device that enables health workers to identify non-palpable breast lumps in just a few minutes, without pain or radiation and at a fraction of the cost of a mammogram. After multiple regulatory approvals, over 200,000 women in 12 countries have benefited, many receiving a breast exam for the first time in their life. With over 15 years of dedicated med-tech commercialization experience, Mihir is leading a multidisciplinary team of clinicians, engineers, and scientists to build meaningful, practical and highly scalable innovations as a defense against the rising tide of cancer globally. Mihir is a two-time TED speaker and adjunct faculty at Drexel University’s School of Biomedical Engineering.

Pierluigi is co-founder and Chairman & CEO at Genenta Science, a clinical stage immune-gene therapy company, and a spinoff from Prof. Luigi Naldini and San Raffaele Milano, which has raised $20M in two rounds. Currently, the company has phase 1/2 trials ongoing in multiple myeloma and glioblastoma. Genenta has labs and an office in Milano and an office at Alexandria Center LaunchLabs, New York.

Pierluigi is a serial entrepreneur and investor in biotech, for example he invested in Ethical Oncology Science (EOS), a company acquired by Clovis Oncology (Nasdaq: CVLS) for $470M in 2013. He is a co-founder and Board Member at Altheia Science, an autoimmune diseases startup that raised $20M for its Series A round in 2018.

Regarding his personal experience, Pierluigi says, “I’m not a scientist, I’m an entrepreneur in biotech with a financial background. I really saw a cancer cell for the first time when my mom was diagnosed in 2007, a few months before my marriage. She is here with us today and she enjoys spending time her granddaughter, thanks to clinical research.”

He is a former VC, e.g. co-founder and CEO at Quantica SGR, Venture Consultant at Sofinnova Partners, co-founder and Investment Advisor at Axòn Capital, and co-founder and advisor at AurorA-TT. He is a board member of Italia Startup (Italian Association for startups) and Assobiotec (Italian Association of biotech companies). He is a member of Italian Angels for Biotech (business angel group) and Confindustria Life Sciences and Cluster Life Sciences – Lombardia.