Westchester County Biosciences Accelerator Announces Pitch Day 2022

WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NY, USA, May 12, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ — Westchester County Biosciences Accelerator (WCBA) today announced that the third cohort of emerging biosciences ventures will pitch at the annual Pitch Day event taking place May 12 – 13.

Twelve ventures will pitch this year at the hybrid event occurring at the FIAF French Institute Alliance Française: Florence Gould Hall, as well as virtually. The event will open with remarks from WCBA Program Director Mary Howard, followed by a panel of distinguished WCBA alumni, as well as alumni from other regional programs including the Accelerator for Biosciences in Connecticut (ABCT), and Entrepreneurship Lab NYC (ELabNYC). Interested parties that wish to join the event can register here.

The 2022 WCBA cohort participants and ventures speaking at this year’s event include:

• Charles Mobbs (Mount Sinai) – Having produced novel compounds uniquely protective in animal models of Alzheimer’s Disease and stroke, Gilga-Med seeks to carry out IND-enabling studies followed by clinical trials.

• Charles Silvestro (PNI Therapeutics) – PNI Therapeutics is a digital therapeutics company focused on increasing the efficacy of standard of care cancer treatments through the immersive power of virtual reality.

• Claudia Polgar (Columbia University) – CheckPoint Health is the AI-backed, health management platform for family caregivers, which generates key insights for physicians to reduce errors and costs.

• Etizaz Shah and Amit Bhardwaj (Columbia University) – Ophy Care is the only telemedicine platform that connects patients with doctors who speak their native language and provides free visits to those in need.

• James Scholtz and William Snyder (Independent) – Vyir Inc.‘s proprietary technology is a nanoengineered optical sensing platform, with one application being label-free, direct detection of bio-molecule interactions for quantitative clinical laboratory testing.

• Jay Schiff and Stanislav Roslyakov (Independent) – Addinex offers a low-cost system to reduce medication misuse and addiction. Our patented dispenser, app, and DEA-approved mailer limit dosage access, monitor treatment, provide personalized feedback, and ease medication disposal.

• Lili Deligianni, Tyler Kulcsar and Maria Lopez (Columbia University) – Sense4me is developing a digital therapeutic that provides just-in-time intervention in order to reduce relapses. The focus of Sense4me is the person who struggles with alcohol addiction and or other mental health conditions.

• Matt Mandel (Independent) – Renegade Therapeutics is developing novel drugs for the treatment of multiple sclerosis.

• Maya Ber Lerner (New York University – NYU) – Chiefy’s mission is zero waste and zero harm in surgery. Chiefy is building a platform for surgical team collaboration that revolutionizes perioperative efficiency, quality and safety.

• Natasha Shtraizent, Lina Freage and Efrat Eliyahu (Mount Sinai) – FREZENT Biological Solutions will improve the clinical outcomes in head and neck cancer by developing a novel adjuvant therapeutic, targeting drug-resistant dormant cancer cells.

• Rafael Gras Pena (Columbia University) – Bioma Therapeutics creating a technology that reduces the experimental time and cost of developing stem cell differentiation protocols, for regenerative and drug discovery applications.

• Roman Fleysher (Albert Einstein College of Medicine) – Sure-Quant provides traditional service and software-as-a-service solutions to individual researchers, clinical trials and radiologists to simplify all aspects of brain MRI image analysis.

Westchester County Executive George Latimer said: “Westchester County is home to a diverse and growing biosciences ecosystem. This cohort of Westchester County Biosciences Accelerator includes an impressive array of innovative biosciences ventures, and we are excited to watch them grow and evolve.”

WCBA Program Director Mary Howard, commented: “The third cohort of the Westchester County Biosciences Accelerator program has shown incredible promise in their innovative concepts and ideas. We’re excited for them to showcase their concepts to the region at this exciting entrepreneurial event.”

Deborah Novick, Director of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Westchester County said: “The Westchester County Biosciences Accelerator plays a pivotal role in brining new ventures into our local biosciences ecosystem. We are proud of this year’s participants and looking forward to this week’s event.”

WCBA cohort alumni have already achieved important professional milestones including Kistein Monkhouse, winner of the 2021 Allscripts Advancing Health Equity Using Social Determinants of Health Developer Challenge with her mobile app, Patient Orator; JelikaLite has been granted Breakthrough Device Designation from the FDA for their Cognilum System – a novel, individualized, non-invasive technology for the reduction of pediatric autism symptoms; HomeoLux has rebranded as BRIGHT and enjoys increasing sales of their passive light therapy wellness product to stimulate brain, memory and attention. CatchU, most recently, was accepted into the Westchester Innovation Network (WIN) Program, and was matched with Burke Rehabilitation Hospital to initiate their first pilot study.

For more information on these ventures and their successes, visit Westchester County Biosciences Accelerator.

About The Westchester County Office of Economic Development

The Westchester County Office of Economic Development works to improve the County’s economic well-being and quality of life. This includes a broad range of activities to attract, create and retain jobs, and to foster a resilient, pro-growth and inclusive economy. For information, visit https://westchestercatalyst.com/.

About Westchester County Biosciences Accelerator

Westchester County Biosciences Accelerator (WCBA) is a competitive-entry, six-month program that helps grow emerging bioscience ventures by providing scientist and engineer inventors entrepreneurship education and business networking to access global funders and prospective team members. WCBA supports the development of Westchester as a hub of bioscience invention and commercialization by harnessing the creativity and ambition present in the academic institutions, spinouts from established companies and serial entrepreneurs.

The WCBA is supported by Pfizer, Wilson Sonsini, JP Morgan Chase & Co., & Atostek.

About Design Technologies

Design Technologies helps build emergent intellectual property (IP)–focused ventures and founded ELabNYC, the successful biosciences pre-accelerator program in New York City for research institution spinouts. ELabNYC ventures have raised over $400M, including Yiviva, a Yale spinout from Yung-Chi Cheng’s lab, Landos Therapeutics, Cresilon, Histowiz and Carespeak (OptimizeRx).

Kayleigh Lentz
Co-Communications
+1 914-666-0066
[email protected]
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