Kickigai is back!

Hey there,

It’s been a long time since you heard from us…the world has changed and so have we all.

Anything special that happened to you in the meantime?

Just reply to this email and tell us (we reply to every message!)

We are very excited to announce a new chapter in the life of Kickigai - always true to our values but with a clearer focus: helping ambitious talent like you to leverage your skills, find meaningful work and boost your career in the startup world.

Why the startup world?

Because we believe it’s the perfect combination where you can get a chance to grow at an incredible pace (both personally and professionally) while working on something that tackles some of the hardest problems in healthcare & life sciences.

We also want to debunk some myths and give you a sneak peek at what it really means to be part of this world…in short, we are here to share the good, the bad and the ugly of startup land.

Beyond what we’ve seen in movies (aka teenagers working on a dream in their garage - 👋 Zuck), there is so much more out there!

From scale-ups (companies that have passed the startup phase) to accelerators, venture capital firms and incubators, opportunities are abundant.

And if you are wondering about the real difference between a startup and a scale-up, you should check out this article.

From now on, we’ll share how you can get the right opportunities to build an outstanding and meaningful career in the startup world, together with a weekly deep dive into a fascinating topic, a snapshot of some impactful research and the latest startup funding rounds in health & bio.

Stay tuned!

Deep Dive: how to upend cancer screening

The most effective way to fight cancer is prevention and age is an undisputed primary risk factor.
On one hand, this helps create predicting models but it also leads to a data bias in models used for risk scores.

The current state of the art
All available solutions for cancer prevention are still far from accurate and reliable screening:

- Genomic tests can give insights about an individual predisposition to cancer by looking at mutations in cancer susceptibility genes. These are affordable tests but are unfortunately only validated primarily on people with white ancestry

- Liquid biopsy tests are mostly single omic tests that look at a specific biologic marker and because of their narrow scope are quite affordable.

Multi-omics tests instead cost exponentially more and it has been proven that false positives are usually higher than true positives.

The reason is that these tests have been validated with 50+ years old people and when used on low-risk individuals they lead to a high % of false positives and low predictive value.

What’s next?
Large Language Models and the Transformer (aka the reason behind the current AI hype) with multimodal input capabilities can help in enriching the datasets used for these benchmarks by including multiple types of scans, nutrition factors, socioeconomic insights and environmental exposure.

This could lead to much higher accuracy and prediction capabilities without the need for multi-omic screenings, which are nowadays only accessible to the wealthy.

Learn more in Eric Topol’s publication, Ground Truths

This week's top reads

1. Cell and gene therapy manufacturing: the next generation of startups (Biopharmadive)

2. FDA grants conditional approval to Sarepta’s gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (Reuters)

3. Brand-new obesity drugs will be cheaper and more effective (Nature)

4. WHO's cancer research agency to say aspartame sweetener a possible carcinogen -sources (Reuters)

Latest funding rounds in health & bio

1. Tagworks raised $65M to make ‘click-to-release’ cancer drugs 🇳🇱

2. hema.to raised €3.6M to scale its AI software for blood cancer decision support across European laboratories 🇩🇪

3. EBAMed, raised €14.35M to develop a guidance system for the non-invasive treatment of heart arrhythmias through Proton Therapy 🇨🇭

4. Gleamer raised €27M to expand its AI medical imaging solution from radiography to CT scans and mammography while expanding to the US 🇫🇷

5. Fertifa, a startup offering end-to-end reproductive health support to employees globally raised £5M 🇬🇧

6. 32Co, a company that enables cooperation between generalist and specialist clinicians raised £2.2M to scale their solutions beyond orthodontics 🇬🇧

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When you are ready, there are 3 ways we can help you

1. 10 steps to join the startup world
   A workbook to help you find your ideal role in the startup ecosystem. From understanding the key players to finding hidden opportunities, this framework will guide you every step of the way.
   

2. How to build startup teams
   The ultimate guide on hiring, onboarding and retaining talent. Learn the proven playbooks that have helped 100+ founders build winning teams.
   And if you’re looking to join a startup, this is your chance to learn everything that happens behind the curtains.

3. Land your dream job with 1:1 private career coaching

   Get actionable and tailored advice from someone who has overcome similar obstacles and doubts in their career.
   You can book a 60 minutes session by donating to any charity.