10 November 2023

One year ago, Neurofanos was announced as the overall winner of the 2022 Velocity $100k Challenge and the entrepreneurial journey for this multidisciplinary team of biomedical engineers, neurosurgeons, researchers, and academics was launched. Their winning innovation is a revolutionary AI-driven tool capable of measuring and analysing the structure of the brain in real time. It is a technological advancement with the potential to support neurosurgeons to perform more accurate surgeries, leading to improved patient safety.

The Velocity $100k Challenge, delivered by the University of Auckland Business School’s Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), awarded the Neurofanos team $25,000 in seed capital. However, the more valuable part of the prize package was the CIE Venture Lab incubation programme. Venture Lab aims to provide all the winning ventures with the support they need to take their plans to the next level and includes mentorship from an experienced entrepreneur. “Getting advice on how to best organise the project and the team, all while obtaining a vision to set ourselves up for long-term success, was extremely valuable,” says Dr Hamid Abbasi, Co-Founder and CEO of Neurofanos. 

The road for MedTech start-ups is a particularly long and expensive one, and Neurofanos finished their time in Venture Lab on a mission to source further funding. “We have identified that navigating the complex regulatory environment in the neuro-navigational space to be a major time-consuming and costly challenge ahead,” notes Dr Abbasi. 

In September this year, the University research team led by Dr Abbasi was awarded $1,000,000 in funding from the Endeavour ‘Smart Ideas’ Fund to further develop the technology, which will eventually be licensed to Neurofanos. The Endeavour Fund is managed through the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and aims to catalyse and rapidly test promising, innovative scientific research ideas that have high potential to benefit New Zealand.  

“We are at the big-bang moment of ‘AI in neuro-navigation’,” says Dr Abbasi, and the funding from the Endeavour Fund is crucial to support his team to deliver “the next generation of surgical navigation technology,” which he believes will revolutionise neurosurgery. Professor Merryn Tawhai, Director of the Auckland Bioengineering Institute (ABI), agrees that funding is critical for innovative research. “It is challenging but so important that our researchers can access funding such as that provided by the Endeavour fund to help take their innovative science through to clinical and, hopefully, commercial impact. The team have done a great job of leveraging ABI’s innovation environment and the programmes offered by CIE to mature their understanding of a pathway to market and the research they still need to do to de-risk this.” 

Dr Abbasi describes financial constraints as one of the hardest start-up challenges Neurofanos has faced so far. The Neurofanos team is currently in the process of receiving assistance from UniServices after presenting to their investment committee (Return on Science), and are negotiating an intellectual property transfer agreement, as well as preparing for a pre-seed capital round with the University of Auckland Inventors’ Fund. 

“Busyness” was also identified as another source of challenge by Dr Abbasi, with many in the team trying to fit Neurofanos in around work commitments and other projects, “We are fortunate to be working with a talented transdisciplinary team, spanning various career stages, and collaborating closely with Mātai, a nationally renowned MRI imaging institute, and their partners.” The Neurofanos team includes high-demand talent such as Dr Hamid Abbasi from the University of Auckland Bioengineering Institute (ABI), Dr Jason Correia – Auckland City Hospital consultant neurosurgeon co-director of the Neurosurgery Research Unit at the Centre for Brain Research,  and Dr Samantha Holdsworth – Director at Mātai Medical Institute, who is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Anatomy and Medical Imaging at the University.

Recently, three of the engineering team members, Alireza Sharifzadeh-Kermani, Jiantao Shen and Tony Cui, were each recognised for their outstanding innovation at the University of Auckland Blues Awards. 

Sir Richard Faull, Director of the Centre for Brain Research, endorsed the Blues Awards winners, commenting, “I have been following the team’s contributions to the field of neurosurgery and their remarkable commitment to advancing medical technology in this field. The impact of this prototype cannot be overstated, as it paves the way for further advancements and brings us closer to fully realising the potential of this innovative approach.” 

Celebrating the success of  Neurofanos team members Alireza Sharifzadeh-Kermani, Jiantao Shen and Tony Cui at the Blues Award