Medical innovations, Sustainability, Agritech and AI dominate #21toWatch 2024 Awards

The 6 ^th annual #21toWatch innovation awards have been unveiled at an awards ceremony at The Bradfield Centre in Cambridge, the UK Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation.

The annual Awards – which highlight the Top21 standout individuals, game-changing companies, and world-leading innovations from across Cambridge and the East of England – are widely relied upon to be an early indication of the NextGen innovators set to make a considerable contribution to a better world and future.

Since its beginnings in 2018, #21toWatch alumni have included startups which have grown into world leading companies such as CMR Surgical, Riverlane, Paragraf, Flusso, Colorifix, Unitary, VividQ, Broken String BioSciences, Xampla, Sano Genetics, SATAVIA, Porotech and Cambridge Gan Devices – and the total amount of investment in #21toWatch alumni and British entrepreneurship now tops £1.036 billion (£1,036,508,387) to date. (This figure excludes undisclosed sums and private equity but does include the £621,383,288 investment in 2019 winner, behemoth CMR Surgical.)

This year, there has been a sharp focus on medical innovation with early disease detection and surgical advancements high on the agenda. Ground-breaking innovations from across Cleantech/Sustainability are also included with some exciting battery developments – and the Agritech and AI sectors have also featured heavily.

The full list of inspirational Top21.2024 winners is:

The #21toWatch Top21.2024 People:

Ahmed Waraky, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute and co-founder of K-Stem, is directing research that focuses on machine learning and single-cell omics to advance stem cell transplantation and personalised medicine

Alicia Showering, CEO of BugBiome, is dedicated to developing natural and durable microbiome-based insect repellents.

Mark Golab, co-founder of Cambridge Surgical Models (CSM), a startup focusing on manufacturing a new generation of artificial anatomical models for surgical training.

Bakul Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Deliver Biosciences, developing nanoparticle delivery vectors for targeted and specific delivery of payloads to re-programme cells in vivo, curing fatal diseases in a fraction of the time and cost compared to existing curative therapies

Jack Chengzhi Guo’s venture with Professor Erwin Reisner promises a new way to treat waste plastics. Based on interdisciplinary research at the University of Cambridge, their technology turns waste plastics into green hydrogen and valuable organics

Nadia Radzman is a plant biologist working on rehabilitating forgotten legumes back into the food system and is a co-founder of a startup that accelerates genetic improvements in challenging legume crops.

Paolo Bombelli and colleagues pioneered the development of a novel technology capable to generate electricity from the photosynthesis of algae. This novel technology can substitute portable batteries for powering billions of small electronic devices.

The #21toWatch Top21.2024 Companies:

BeyondMath is using AI to solve the complex simulation of physics in engineering design orders of magnitude faster, providing reductions in time, cost and environmental impact when taking designs to production.

Cambridge Vision Technology is a startup whose technology enables early detection of Alzheimer’s Disease using retinal scanning

Cellexcel has created a novel process to manufacture water-resistant bio-composite materials. These will replace conventional composites such as fiberglass & carbon fibre, as well as plastics and possibly metal.

ExpressionEdits’ proprietary intronization platform recodes transgenes to better resemble natural genes, leading to significant improvement in protein production – a key challenge for recombinant proteins and DNA medicines

Kuano combines state-of-the-art simulation and AI to add quantum detail to structure-based drug discovery, helping to enable the design of next generation medicines.

Remedium Energy developing a new carbon capture technology, carbon capture battery, that captures CO2 from cement/steel plants and monetizes the variation in electricity price to make carbon capture profitable.

Vector Bioscience’s platform technology tailors nanomaterials for drug delivery applications. These nanomaterials are MOFs (Metal Organic Frameworks) can store 10x more molecules than other encapsulation methods and are designed and tailored for effective and targeted delivery.

The #21toWatch Top21.2024 Innovations (Things):

EPIHERD (Antler Bio) – harnessing gene expression data and AI to evaluate the status of livestock and prescribe targeted husbandry interventions to increase performance, efficiency, welfare and sustainability.

Gus, the automated asparagus picker (Autopickr) – incorporates cutting-edge AI and navigation technologies, robust robotics, and new cutting technology to optimise the harvesting process.

Heartfelt Technologies – an automatic, AI supported, non-contact telemonitoring solution for heart failure patients.

Molyon has developed a new cathode material to enable high energy-density and long-life lithium-sulfur batteries. This opens up fundamentally new modes of transport and facilitates the net-zero transition

Tenyks – ‘AI doctor’ resolving issues for machine learning engineers working with computer vision data.

Verinnogen – building hand-held, innovative tools to directly profile physical properties of 3D surfaces with direct applications in pre-clinical oncology research.

William Oak Diagnostics – an innovative point-of-care test which simplifies the identification of various micronutrient deficiencies making maternal, child, and infant testing more accessible.

The final Top21 were selected from a shortlist of 40 out of 301 applications – and across a range of sub-sectors spanning aerospace, insurtech, augmented reality (AR), AI, and biotechnology – by an independent judging panel: Jon Bradford, Partner at Dynamo Ventures; Serial Entrepreneur Fiona Nielsen, CEO at Neurolentech GmbH; and Nitin Patel, founder of Impact Management Consulting Ltd.

Entrepreneur Faye Holland, who created #21toWatch, said: “The #21toWatch alumni list reads like the Who’s Who of successful British entrepreneurship with previous winners already huge contributors to a better future. 

“With every new Awards, I think it’s going to be impossible to trump the previous year – but it always happens as the level of ingenuity never decreases. And with the work of our partners and judges we are consistently picking the right businesses to watch – in last year alone, which was a particularly difficult year for investment, our alumni raised over £110m in investments and funding which is simply incredible.

“It is a genuine thrill to see the companies and the people behind them progress. We are honoured to be there at the start of each journey.”

Over the last five years, #21toWatch has celebrated and promoted over 1,700 game-changing startups, ground-breaking innovations and standout individuals. To find out more please go to https://www.cofinitive.com/21towatch/

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