As patients and consumers spend more time — and money — on tech to help them monitor their health, a growing group of startups are looking to cash in on the trend.
Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) — small devices that usually attach to a user's arm and measure blood sugar levels — have been made famous by London-based company Zoe, one of Europe’s best funded D2C health techs. Today, fellow UK-based startup Sava is announcing an $8m seed round to develop the next generation of the devices.
The company is building a new type of CGM, which it says will be less invasive and cheaper than current devices and able to monitor a wider range of chronic conditions and biomarkers in the future.
It’s looking to take advantage of the “exploding” CGM market and the “massive greenfield opportunity” in the space, says cofounder and co-CEO Renato Circi.
The raise, led by Balderton Capital and Exor Ventures, takes Sava’s total funding to $13m. The startup will use the money to take its CGM through clinical trials and scale its manufacturing capability.
‘Future proofed’ CGM
Currently, CGMs on the market use a single needle (about 6mm long) to pierce the skin and reach what’s known as interstitial fluid (ISF) — which is found in the spaces between cells and from which blood glucose levels can be measured.
Sava’s CGM also measures glucose levels in the ISF but with several smaller 1mm microneedles — which it calls “microsensors”. That approach comes with several benefits, says Circi.
One is user experience: people are put off by the prospect of putting a needle in their skin and Sava’s smaller microneedles are less intimidating, he argues.
There’s also cost. Manufacturing costs of current CGMs on the market mean that vendors sell the product for £50 for two weeks of monitoring — and only a “fraction of people” have access to them, says Circi. But, when the startup’s manufacturing capabilities are scaled, he hopes Sava will be able to make CGMs “up to 10 times” cheaper than they are currently.
Circi also says that, eventually, because Sava’s device has several sensing microneedles, it will be able to "future proof" its CGM so it can measure molecules other than glucose — something that current devices, which only use one needle, aren’t capable of doing.
Sava hasn’t decided which molecules it will expand into next, but Circi tells Sifted it could look at measuring things like ketones, urea, proteins, allergens or alcohol. These biomarkers could be used to analyse sports performance, for example, he adds.
A growing market
CGMs were originally designed for diabetes patients to help them manage their condition, but have recently seen growing usage from consumers looking to keep more aware of their broader health. Zoe, for example, uses CGMs to help build users’ personalised scores for thousands of foods on its app.
“We believe that D2C markets will be huge,” says Circi. “CGMs won’t just be diabetes, but which use cases will be successful we don’t know.”
It’s this rising awareness of CGMs that helped Sava raise its recent round, says Circi. “When we had conversations with investors three years ago, they were asking us: ‘what is a CGM?’. Over the last couple of years, it’s been ‘I’ve tried a CGM and I’ve seen how it works and there’s something we can do better with them’.”
There are also signs that healthcare providers could also be a fruitful market, says Circi, pointing to the UK’s NHS making CGMs available to all type 1 diabetes patients in recent times.
What’s next
While Sava’s tech isn’t novel — there have been studies in recent years exploring using microneedles for CGM — “no-one has been able to crack it” and release a commercial product so far, says Circi.
That’s because it’s a “very difficult product to build”, says Circi, adding that it’s taken five years for the startup to get to this point and currently 35 of Sava’s 40-strong team are engineers — many of whom have PhDs.
Next up, Sava plans to launch clinical trials with 50 diabetes patients, following it recently gaining approval from the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
The majority of the funds will be spent on developing the hardware for its second-generation CGM, which will be smaller than its first, as well as automating manufacturing capabilities to scale up production.
Sava also plans to go back out to fundraise again in the next 12 months, says Circi — as part of its plan to take its first product to market in the next two years.
“It costs tens of millions to take a product like this to market.”
