Bringing a new drug to market takes 10–15 years and costs €1.5–2 billion, with a clinical trial failure rate of 95–97%. This leads to wasted resources and delays in effective treatments. Current analytical methods don’t fully reveal how cells respond to drugs, resulting in unexpected side effects, reduced effectiveness, or drug resistance. QurieGen meets these challenges with a platform integrating single-cell genomics, multi-omic analysis, and AI predictive modeling. Its technology, QuRIE-seq™, offers high-resolution mapping of cellular responses across multiple molecular layers, including mRNA and proteins.
QurieGen, a techbio startup focused on accelerating drug development in oncology, has secured €2.2 million in pre-seed funding to develop advanced AI-based technology. The project has been backed by investors from the CEE region: Tensor Ventures, Lighthouse Ventures, BSV Ventures, Moondust Ventures, and 22 Hor Invest, along with renowned US venture capital investor Tim Draper of Draper Associates.
Maciej Jarząb, COO and co-founder, told TFN: “The majority of the round will go toward building the world’s largest database of cell–drug molecule interactions. Over the next 12 months, we plan to grow our team by 50% to accelerate both research and technology development. Additional resources will be directed toward automating our data analysis pipeline and launching the first features of our AI platform.”
How QurieGen addresses critical challenges in drug development, particularly for oncology
QurieGen is a biotech company founded in April 2022 in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, as a spin-off from Radboud University. Dr. Kinga Matuła, a biotechnologist with a PhD in physical chemistry, and Prof. Wilhelm Huck, an expert in single-cell technologies and systems biology, co-founded it.
The company addresses critical challenges in drug development, particularly for oncology: high costs, long timelines, and high failure rates of traditional drug discovery processes. QurieGen aims to revolutionise this process using its proprietary QuRIE-seq™ technology to decode cellular responses at a single-cell level, enabling faster, more precise, and cost-effective drug development.
Dr. Matuła’s personal experiences as a scientist and an oncology patient profoundly influenced the company’s mission. During her research years, her diagnosis highlighted the urgent need for innovative tools to improve patient care and accelerate the development of effective therapies.
“At the time I was diagnosed as an oncological patient, we were developing groundbreaking single-cell technology alongside a multidisciplinary team of scientists and pharma experts in the Netherlands. At the same time, there was a request from a pharmaceutical company to study a drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration as it did not work as expected. This was our first paid project in which we designed a special technology to study single cells. Eventually, this project and two others with pharmaceutical companies led to the creation of the startup QurieGen, which I currently lead”, Kinga Matuła described
We gained a deeper understanding of why some drugs work for certain cancers while others don’t. This realization was a breakthrough — our technology could help accelerate drug development, making it faster and more cost-effective. But beyond the science, my personal battle gave me firsthand insight into the challenges patients face. This experience also strengthened my resolve to create meaningful change,” added Kinga Matuła, co-founder and CEO of QurieGen, describing the rough beginnings.
QurieGen’s short-term goals include establishing its leadership in single-cell analysis and partnering with pharmaceutical companies to identify promising drug targets. Its long-term vision is to enable the data-driven discovery of new cellular response patterns and drug targets while developing AI-driven tools for precision medicine.
The company’s innovative platform has already attracted collaborations with major pharmaceutical companies like AstraZeneca’s Acerta Pharma and Janssen Pharmaceutica (Johnson & Johnson). By providing insights into drug mechanisms of action (MoA) and patient-specific responses, QurieGen is positioned to transform drug discovery and development.
QurieGen’s QuRIE-seq™ technology: What’s so special about it?
QurieGen’s proprietary QuRIE-seq™ technology is a cutting-edge platform that revolutionises drug discovery and development by providing unprecedented insights into cellular responses. The technology simultaneously quantifies mRNA, membrane proteins, intracellular proteins, and phosphoproteins at single-cell resolution.
The platform “locks” biology to create high-throughput time-lapse maps of cellular responses, enabling researchers to study drug interactions dynamically rather than in static snapshots. By integrating single-cell genomics with AI and machine learning, QurieGen builds predictive models of disease biology and drug responses.
The platform uncovers previously hidden biological insights, such as heterogeneity in cellular responses, mechanisms of action (MoA), and reasons for drug resistance or failure. This unique combination of features accelerates drug development, reduces costs, and enables precision medicine by tailoring therapies to individual patients.
QurieGen operates in the competitive field of single-cell genomics and multi-omics alongside notable competitors, including 10x Genomics, Mission Bio, Fluidigm Corporation, Illumina, and Thermo Fisher Scientific. Unlike competitors focusing on specific omics layers (such as transcriptomics or proteomics), QurieGen integrates multiple molecular layers simultaneously (transcriptomics, proteomics, phosphoproteomics), providing a more comprehensive understanding of cellular responses. The ability to map cellular responses over time is a breakthrough compared to static analyses offered by competitors like 10x Genomics or Fluidigm.
Jarząb concluded, “Our goal is to build a fully integrated AI platform capable of rapidly and accurately designing new drug therapies using our proprietary database. This will dramatically reduce the time, cost, and complexity involved in drug development. We aim to shift the industry from a trial-and-error approach to a fast, data-driven model of therapeutic discovery.”
“Our investment in QurieGen aligns perfectly with our mission at Moondust Ventures: backing outstanding and visionary teams leveraging technology to transform healthcare. QurieGen’s AI-driven approach to drug discovery has the potential to revolutionise therapeutic development and drive breakthroughs in precision medicine,” said Marios Nicolettis, Managing Partner, Moondust Ventures.
“We invested in QurieGen because we see not only a transformative technology with the potential to revolutionise cancer drug development but also an exceptionally strong and diverse team driving it forward. Kinga and her team combine world-class scientific expertise with personal resilience and entrepreneurial grit. At BSV Ventures, we back deep tech founders who dare to build at the edge of science, and QurieGen is a perfect example of that ambition,” concluded Sandra Golbreich, General Partner at BSV Ventures.
