Meet the Start-ups

Michiel Stevens | CEO & Founder | FETCH

After working in commercial research, development and sales of single cell isolation equipment for about 10 years, Michiel transferred to academia. His goal here was to pursue a solution for the lack of intact, target expressing tumor material obtained from minimally invasive liquid biopsy procedures. This research led to the FETCH circulating tumor cell enrichment and isolation technologies, allowing the obtainment of sufficient tumor material for treatment target analysis.

To continue this development toward implementation, Michiel founded the University of Twente spin-off FETCH. With this, he aims to enable academic researchers to better study tumor heterogeneity and evolution, and provide critical information on target expression (changes) to pharmaceutical developers. But above all, FETCH aims to provide better care to patients, by obtaining the target expression information needed for true personalized treatment in metastatic cancer.

FETCH

To obtain the therapy target expression profile of metastatic cancer patients, FETCH detects and analysis circulating tumor cells from the patients entire blood volume. For this, the University of Twente spin-off company uses leukapheresis as a method of sample collection. The use of this readily available and approved technology facilitates simpler implementation, allowing FETCH to show the potential of its technology in metastatic prostate cancer early on.

Founded in 2023, FETCH has since further improved its technology and business case using non-dilutive funding. FETCH now offers early stage investors the opportunity to partake in its upcoming seed round.