Elma Hawkins

Sep 24, 2018

MouSensor, Inc. , a New York City-based biotechnology company that develops a novel platform to digitize the sense of smell, raised $3.3M in its seed funding round. The round was co-led by imec.xpand and Alexandria Venture Investments with participation from New York Ventures and Elma Hawkins, Ph.D. Led by Charlotte D’Hulst, Ph.D., CEO, and Prof. Paul Feinstein, Chief Science Officer, MouSensor is a biotech startup. Founded in 2016 as a spinout from The City University of New York (CUNY), based on technology developed at the Feinstein Lab for Neurogenetics at Hunter College, the company is engineering a living nose-on-a-chip to detect, discover and digitize every single smell, from fragrances in a perfumer’s palette to the odors associated with diseases, such as Parkinson’s. MouSensor has previously been funded by a Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Science Foundation. To drive continued development of its technology, MouSensor has developed a collaboration with nano-electronics innovator, imec (Leuven, Belgium) to integrate the MouSensor Biology with silicon chip technology. This R&D partnership was recently awarded with a $1.2M grant from Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship (VLAIO). The company has set up a subsidiary in Belgium to facilitate the imec collaboration and fuel its own chip R&D. MouSensor is also a member company of Alexandria LaunchLabs, a full-service startup platform, through which the company was able to access the Alexandria Seed Capital Platform, an innovative funding model led by Alexandria Venture Investments.