GlycoDiagnostics

Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) represents one of the largest and fastest-growing global health challenges, affecting more than 30% of the adult population, over 1.3 billion people worldwide. Many patients progress silently to advanced fibrosis, cirrhosis, and liver cancer, remaining undiagnosed until late stages where intervention is ineffective and costly. This creates a critical unmet need for early, reliable, and scalable detection of fibrosis, particularly in high-risk populations such as patients with type 2 diabetes. At the same time drug development is hindered by inefficient patient inclusion due to poor performance of current non-invasive tests in detecting clinically significant fibrosis (F2 stage).

We address this gap with a novel, non-invasive diagnostic test based on a glycan biomarker that enables early and accurate detection of fibrosis. Developed at Leiden University Medical Center and protected by patent, our GlycoDiagnostics test leverages specific glycosylation signatures that outperform existing tests such as FIB-4 and FibroScan in a proof-of-concept retrospective clinical study. It enables more reliable and effective patient identification for clinical trials, reducing missed cases, accelerating recruitment, and lowering costs. Our test is minimally invasive, compatible with plasma or dried blood spots, and scalable for multicenter trials.

Our team is led by two co-founders Katarina Madunic, PhD, serving as a CEO who brings strong background in translational glycoscience and Phase III clinical trials as well as prof. Manfred Wuhrer, the inventor and future CSO, who brings over 20 years of experience in glycan biomarker discovery and advanced analytics. The team is complemented by Vrinda Mohanlal, who recently joined as a market analysis intern. We also benefit from the guidance of experienced advisors: clinical hepatology experts Maarten Tushuizen, MD and Adrian Holleboom, MD and business advisor Stefan Ellenbroek. As we continue to grow, we are actively seeking an experienced team member with a strong track record in bringing diagnostic products to market.