BiopSense: From Research to Business - A Pandemic Funded Breakthrough
- Nina Pulkkis
- Sep 29
- 4 min read
From Academia to MedTech – by Chance and Persistence
Professor Marja Tiirola of the University of Jyväskylä never set out to start a company – she drifted into it. An ERC Proof of Concept project (BiopSense) and Business Finland’s MUTTE project showed that new diagnostic methods could be developed a long way, but the true bottleneck lay in sample pre-processing and logistics. When the university projects ended, the idea was there, but no ready path forward. The solution: to start a company with colleagues and look for resources.
Those resources came from an unexpected direction. COVID-19 hit, and BiopSense pivoted into PCR diagnostics as part of a subcontracting chain. In its second year, turnover exceeded five million euros, and the profit kick-started the real product development. At peak pace, the company analyzed up to 1,500 samples per day – around 10% of all tests in Finland – while at the same time building its own process management, automation, and efficient company culture.
The pandemic years left more than just capital behind: a skilled team, a disciplined work culture, and a deep understanding of how to scale.
“We didn’t want to leave good discoveries unused. The revenue from COVID diagnostics gave us the means to carry them forward.”— Marja Tiirola, CSO, Founder, BiopSense
Practical Barriers to Liquid Biopsy and the Urgent Need
Liquid biopsy (blood-based diagnostics) can greatly improve cancer monitoring and personalized treatment – and is widely used in the U.S. and in prenatal screening. Yet the same practical barriers persist globally:
Pre-processing requires skilled personnel and multiple manual steps (including double centrifugation).
Logistics are demanding and costly: plasma must be separated immediately and shipped on dry ice, or whole blood must be rushed under temperature control to prevent sample degradation.
Variation in quality and human error undermine reliability of analysis.
Without solving this bottleneck, the “fast and easy” liquid biopsy systems cannot spread into everyday use at smaller clinics.
New cancer therapies need frequent monitoring
In recent years, targeted therapies and immunotherapies have emerged that can replace or delay the need for chemotherapy. However, treatment response varies widely between patients. These drugs are expensive, and clinical decision-making requires that effectiveness be assessed quickly – within weeks, not months – so that an ineffective treatment can be stopped and replaced.
Traditionally, such monitoring is done via tissue biopsies – invasive, slow, and costly, and not feasible to repeat frequently without burdening the patient and delaying results. Liquid biopsy offers a more convenient, patient-friendly path: a blood sample can be taken often and easily, making it possible to detect changes in treatment response early(e.g. via cfDNA or RNA biomarkers) and adjust therapy in time. This is crucial both for patient safety and for healthcare cost-effectiveness.
The Solution – An Automated Cartridge that Brings the Lab Closer to the Patient
BiopSense’s answer is an automated single-use cartridge and a compact device to run it, which separates cell-free nucleic acids (cfDNA/RNA) from up to 10 ml of blood in under an hour – with no centrifuges and no manual steps. The goal is that one minute of hands-on time is enough, with everything else happening automatically, with built-in quality control.
The first market-ready feature is also a logistics breakthrough: the extracted DNA is stable at room temperature. It can be sent in a simple envelope to the next laboratory – even overseas – with no cold chain required. This opens up liquid biopsy to smaller hospitals and private clinics, where samples are infrequent but the need for reliable analysis is the same.
Once the sample is processed by the cartridge, diagnostic modules can be attached. For example, an RNA biomarker module would extend applications beyond oncology into other widespread diseases and risk assessments.
Development & Commercialization – TRL6 and Moving Toward Clinical Use
BiopSense has advanced its solution through intensive development, supported by EIC Transition funding (~€2.5 M)and national instruments (ELY, Business Finland Tempo). The company’s first product, BiopSense Duo, has now reached TRL6: for the first time, the system is being tested in a relevant, real-world environment, with performance validated outside the lab. This is a clear leap toward commercial readiness.
Timeline in brief:
Now: sample preparation automation finalized; reporting to the EU in progress.
Next: sales for Research Use Only (RUO), with extended quality and performance verification.
IVD certification: comprehensive clinical evaluation is required for clinical use, however notified body is not needed in the IVDR process
RNA module: parallel development, target in 3–5 years, phased integration.
Team: ~12 FTEs, a strong mix of molecular biology, automation, and software expertise. The high-pressure experience of COVID diagnostics honed skills in production organization and scaling, which are now applied to product development.
The Impact – Faster Decisions, Fewer Errors, Lower Cost
By standardizing sample pre-processing and bringing it closer to the patient, three things happen:
Faster treatment decisions: response is seen in weeks, allowing therapy changes in time.
Fewer errors: automation and internal QC reduce human error and sample mix-ups.
Lower cost: cold chain and express shipping are eliminated, making liquid biopsy workable in everyday clinical workflows, even in smaller units.
The Future – Oncology First, but a Wider Field Ahead
The first target area is oncology, where the need is urgent and the company’s founding expertise is strong. The same principles, however, apply to prenatal screening and transplant rejection monitoring – and on the RNA side, long-term potential includes cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, neurodegenerative disorders, and even mental health biomarkers.
BiopSense’s strategy is modular: first remove the bottleneck, then add the most promising diagnostic module – whether developed in-house or by partners.
The market path is twofold: in Europe, research use first, then clinical use following IVD approval. The U.S. is an attractive clinical market due to more flexible decision-making and payer structures, where private insurers and patients themselves enable quicker adoption than in Europe’s state-driven healthcare systems.
Finland’s Biotech Environment – Strong Support, Challenging Capital
According to Marja Tiirola, Finland offers excellent support mechanisms (Business Finland, ELY, EU instruments), but scaling deep tech diagnostics requires tens of millions – and the domestic funding pool is often too small. The risk of failure grows if both money and time are insufficient. At the same time, examples like Mobidiag, Blueprint Genetics, and Nightingale Health show that successes are possible when ambition is matched with sufficient resources.