The Covid-19 pandemic has not slowed down the race to change the world from these up-and-coming science and healthcare listmakers.
By Katie Jennings, Aayushi Pratap, Vicky Valet and Justin Conklin
James McIlroy believes the microbes in human feces hold the key to new therapeutics for a wide range of diseases. The 29-year-old founder and CEO of Scotland-based EnteroBiotix, which has raised $22.6 million to date, is improving upon fecal transplantation. Today, that process is an invasive procedure that moves bacteria from a healthy patient to the gut of someone who’s sick, and requires a colonoscopy to transfer material from the donor to the patient. EnteroBiotix is working to make the procedure easier and less invasive through use of a capsule. It starts with collecting stool samples through the company’s program “Number Two,” where healthy donors fill out a medical questionnaire, which McIlroy says is “probably as detailed as it would be to become an astronaut,” along with a series of tests.
EnteroBiotix has developed a specialized manufacturing process that can produce a capsule of dried microbes from multiple donors in a matter of hours, as opposed to days, at its facility in Glasgow. The company has already treated patients with the gut microbiome therapy under the U.K.’s version of compassionate use, and is hoping to launch a phase 2 clinical trial focused on liver disease by the end of the year. McIlroy, who founded the company as a side project in 2017 while working as a doctor in the U.K.’s National Health Service, is now focused full-time on building the company’s manufacturing technology and therapy pipeline. He hopes EnteroBiotix’s platform will eventually extend to help treat other diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease, diabetes and improving the hit rate of cancer immunotherapy. “We’re right at the forefront of an emerging field of science and medicine,” he says. “Patients are going to benefit hugely from microbiome enhancing therapies.”
McIlroy is just one of the many entrepreneurs and scientists on this year’s Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe Healthcare and Science list. The Covid-19 pandemic has not slowed down the race to change the world from these up-and-coming researchers, innovators and business leaders. The list includes talented people working within Europe, as well as Europeans who have taken their skills to all corners of the world.
Several of this year’s other listmakers are focused on transforming the way healthcare is delivered to improve access to populations that might otherwise not be able to get the care they need. Growing up in the Middle East, Christopher El Badaoui, 27, experienced fear and discrimination as a trans, queer person. They teamed up with childhood friend Araxie Boyadijan, 26, and have raised $2.1 million to build LVNDR Health, a U.K.-based virtual LGBTQ+ clinic that partners with local health providers, like Sexual Health London, to provide inclusive care. In the wake of the pandemic and Black Lives Matters movement in 2020, Agnes Mwakatuma, 28, the founder of the charity Black Minds Matter UK, realized her community was lacking in available mental health resources. She has raised $2.1 million to connect Black Individuals with Black therapists for fully funded therapy sessions.
Loulia Kassem, 29, the cofounder of Switzerland-based Rea Diagnostics, is tackling the issue of preterm births by developing a non-invasive way to detect issues early to prevent them from happening. The startup has raised $1.5 million to develop “smart” sanitary pads to collect the vaginal discharge of pregnant people to screen it for biomarkers which are predictive of preterm births. Nikolay Dimolarov, 29, the cofounder of Germany-based Kranus Health, is offering a new approach to a historically taboo topic: erectile dysfunction. The company, which has raised $2.4 million, developed a prescription digital therapeutic provisionally approved by the German medicines regulator that offers a combination of physical and mental therapy exercises.
Other listmakers are harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning to drive progress in healthcare and science. Julien Vidal, 28, Alexandre Attia, 28, and Elie Zerbib-Attal, 28, the cofounders of AZmed are on a mission to “augment doctors with the power of AI.” The Paris-based trio have raised $3.7 million for a workflow tool for radiologists that helps detect fractures in x-rays, speeding up the time to interpret images and reducing errors. Philipp Buhr, 27, and Jan Hoffman, 28, are the cofounders of Marta, a Germany-based online marketplace that has raised $2.1 million in funding for its algorithms that match live-in caregivers with elderly clients who need assistance. Johanna Bergman, 28, is thinking big picture. As the head of strategic initiatives at AI Sweden, a national center that functions as a combination accelerator and research institute with more than 100 partners, she helps guide projects on decentralized AI, natural language understanding and information driven healthcare. “My motivation lies mainly in the democratization of AI, ensuring that we are not putting AI development completely in the hands of just a few countries or companies,” she says.
Two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, listmakers are using technology in the global efforts to combat the virus. Melisa Basol, 27, a PhD Candidate at the University of Cambridge, collaborated with the U.K. Cabinet Office to develop “Go Viral!,” a social intervention game that uses inoculation theory to help prevent the spread of Covid-19 misinformation. The game, which is backed by UNESCO, UN and WHO, has been downloaded over 1.4 million times and in 13 languages. Christina Yida Hu, 29, the head of product for the Covid Study at the nutrition science company ZOE, has helped grow the app to 4.7 million users. The project, which collects information on vaccines, Covid tests, and symptoms, received more than $6.4 million from the U.K. government to aid in population-level Covid surveillance efforts.
This year’s Forbes 30 Under 30 Science and Healthcare list was created using nominations from a variety of sources, and edited by Katie Jennings, Aayushi Pratap, Vicky Valet and Justin Conklin.
Our judges this year were Jesaja Brinkmann, cofounder of Cara Care and an alumnus of the Forbes 2021 30 Under 30 Europe list for Science and Healthcare; Fiona Pathiraja, managing partner of Crista Galli Ventures; Lidia Borrell-Damián, secretary general of Science Europe; and John Breslin, professor of electronic engineering at the National University of Ireland Galway. Thank you to them and to everyone who nominated candidates.
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