Juvion Health Sciences and Neuria win over FIT Funding

Juvion: maintaining the structure and function of movement circuits to improve mobility with age
People today live longer, but not in better health: one in three people over the age of 60 is affected by reduced mobility. This decline in mobility, a significant consequence of ageing, is often attributed to the deterioration of the motor system, in particular the communication between neurons and muscles.

By integrating artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics with traditional neuroscience expertise, Juvion has set up an innovative, sustainable and rapid in vivo discovery platform designed to develop new therapeutic solutions aimed at preventing mobility decline in ageing individuals and delaying the onset of diseases such as sarcopenia.

The award of a Tech Seed loan of CHF 100,000 is particularly important for scaling up the platform, introducing new expertise, improving efficiency and speeding up compound screening. These advancements will facilitate the development of next-generation therapeutics to enhance health span and pave the way for further collaborations to address the pressing challenges of ageing in our society.

Neuria: changing unhealthy behaviour by re-training the brain through play
Modifiable’ behaviours, such as over-consumption of junk food, smoking physical inactivity and harmful use of alcohol, increase the risk of chronic diseases, which are responsible for 74% of all deaths worldwide (41 million deaths). Acting on these behaviours is therefore a major challenge. The problem is that these behaviours are generally dictated by the brain's automatic responses to environmental stimuli, rather than by reasoned, conscious decisions. Programs that involve learning what is healthy and what is not, and then using self-control to implement them, end in failure, just like restrictive diets.

The solution developed by Neuria is based on a completely different approach to reversing one of these unhealthy behaviours - in this case, excessive consumption of sugar and fat - by means of re-training the brain, using tasks that stimulate a neural pathway from the motor system to the motivational system. The intervention is provided by games on smartphones, in which these brain re-training tasks have been hidden.

Users are not even aware of the changes that are taking place, but the digital training will gradually reduce their preference for unhealthy foods and thus restore healthy eating habits. With a frequency of play of around 5-10 minutes a day, a permanent reduction in the brain's response to reward and unhealthy consumption is established in the players brain, leading to 25% of reduction in consumption of unhealthy food items.

The Tech Seed loan of CHF 100,000 provided by FIT will enable Neuria to develop, validate and incorporate the key functionalities of the platform to support the specialists in their work and ensure user retention in the programme.

(Press release)