From Venture Challenge to First Funding: Omivera turns CellEKT into a new drug discovery venture

What does it take to turn years of academic research into a viable life sciences company? For Leiden-based startup Omivera, the answer started with the Venture Challenge program in the winter of 2025.

Omivera is built around CellEKT, a chemical proteomics platform that allows researchers to study how cancer drugs behave inside living cells. The technology originated at Leiden University, where it was developed by Joel Rüegger, Berend Gagestein, Anthe Janssen and colleagues in the lab of Mario van der Stelt, in close collaboration with Roche and with support from Oncode Institute and Oncode Accelerator.

Venture Challenge as the starting point

While the scientific foundation of CellEKT was already strong, the Venture Challenge marked the moment when the team began shaping the research into a venture. During the program, the founders refined their value proposition, explored customer needs, and developed a clear vision for translating CellEKT into a commercial service.

“The Venture Challenge helped us take a crucial step back and ask: what problem are we really solving, for whom, and how do we build a company around it?” says co-founder Joel Rüegger. “It gave us the framework and confidence to move from an academic mindset to an entrepreneurial one.”

The program laid the groundwork for Omivera’s formation later in 2025 by founders Joel Rüegger, Anthe Janssen and Zoë Vogelaar.

From idea to company

Following the Venture Challenge, Omivera secured its first investment of €350,000 from proof-of-concept fund UNIIQ. In parallel, the company signed a license agreement with Leiden University, supported by Knowledge Exchange Office LURIS and Oncode, enabling Omivera to further develop and commercialize the CellEKT platform.

CellEKT addresses a major challenge in cancer drug development: drugs that perform well in traditional laboratory assays often behave differently in patients. By measuring drug–kinase interactions directly in living cells, CellEKT provides more predictive insights early in drug discovery, helping researchers identify promising candidates sooner and reduce late-stage failure.

Building toward impact

With funding secured and the intellectual property in place, Omivera is now establishing its own laboratory at the Leiden Bio Science Park and operating as a contract research organization (CRO). The company collaborates with pharmaceutical and biotech partners to support kinase inhibitor discovery.

Omivera’s journey illustrates how entrepreneurship programs like Venture Challenge can play a pivotal role in transforming academic breakthroughs into real-world applications. What began as a research project is now a venture aiming to improve how cancer drugs are developed — and, ultimately, how patients are treated.