A group of investors including former booking.com top executive Kees Koolen has invested 10 million in medtech MyTomorrows. This Dutch startup helps physicians and patients access potentially life-saving drugs that are still in development and not yet approved. Koolen invests via the Swedish investment fund EQT Ventures.
Frustration
Like many startups, MyTomorrows was born out of frustration. Founder and CEO Ronald Brus (former executive of biotech Crucell) founded the company after his own father couldn’t receive new experimental treatments in time for terminal lung cancer that proved to be successful in early clinical testing. After this personal experience, Brus concluded that the development of new medication that could help (terminally) ill patients took too long. With MyTomorrows, Brus aims to speed up prescriptions of these experimental drugs for patients of who needs them the most.
Testing and trials
Because of extensive testing and trials, pharmaceutical companies usually take up to ten years to get new drugs approved and on the market. Most of the patients who could benefit from those medicines, don’t have the time to wait this long. MyTomorrow has created a digital database where physicians can find so-called phase 2 medicines that aren’t yet approved. Through mediation, MyTomorrow provides access to these development-stage drugs.
Mediation for medication
With MyTomorrows effort, patients can receive treatment that could potentially be life-saving, while the company can also generate more income for biotech and pharmaceutical companies so that the development of these new types of medicine could become less expensive. At the moment MyTomorrows mediates prescriptions for seventeen unapproved types of medication. With the new funding, Brus hopes to get this number up to thirty in 2017.
