Innovation Fund Noord Holland finances UvA-IvI spin-off Ellogon.AI

Ellogon.AI was founded by professors Efstratios Gavves and Evangelos Kanoulas from the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and works closely with the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI).

An important step towards improving survival rates for cancer patients

Selecting patients who are candidates for immunotherapy and for which immunotherapy therapy is crucial. Currently, this is done by medical experts who have to assess tissue from patients using a microscope. However, due to the large number of different cells, this is a very complex task. Additionally, immunotherapy is very expensive, making the importance of selecting the right patients for immunotherapy as quickly as possible very important.

Efstratios Gavves and Evangelos Kanoulas, AI professors at the UvA and co-founders Ellogon: “A completely new way of AI has been developed together with the UvA: sparse-shot learning. Sparse-shot learning is an AI solution specifically intended to assess tissue from cancer patients. Initial results show that sparse-shot learning shows much higher accuracy than traditional AI. Our ambition is to make expert knowledge in the field of AI available to contribute to improving healthcare.”

Robert Kuipers, CEO of Ellogon: “The challenge now is to turn a promising solution into a product that can actually be applied in hospitals. In addition to making a product that fits seamlessly with current clinical practice, very strict rules must also be met to guarantee product safety. The loan from the Innovation Fund Noord-Holland enables Ellogon to actually realize this. The ambition is to have Ellogon’s solution up and running in the first hospitals before the end of next year, thus contributing to the survival chances of people with cancer.”

Wouter Keij, director of the Noord-Holland Innovation Fund : “The technology that Ellogon develops offers great added value for use in hospitals. The Noord-Holland Innovation Fund is therefore pleased that it can contribute to improving the survival chances of patients who have cancer.”

About the North Holland Innovation Fund

The Noord-Holland Innovation Fund is an initiative of the Province of Noord-Holland, the University of Amsterdam, the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam UMC and Sanquin, with support from the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund. The Fund supports entrepreneurs in the Province of Noord-Holland by financing innovation in the Proof-of-Concept phase. The Fund provides convertible loans. The term of the first fund part is 2018-2023.