VEO wins Proefdiervrij Venture Challenge 2023

Scientific innovations that can replace laboratory animals are already highly advanced. Yet implementation still leaves much to be desired. That is why Proefdiervrij supports researchers to bring their non-animal methods to the market with the Proefdiervrij Venture Challenge. During this challenge, teams of researchers work incredibly hard to turn their animal-free innovations into a start-up company. The team with the best business plan wins the challenge and a nice amount of money, and this year it is VEO!

Proefdiervrij Venture Challenge 2023
Four teams of laboratory animal-free researchers were coached in recent weeks, under the guidance of GameChanger Challenge and Proefdiervrij, to set up their own company, turning their scientific breakthrough within the life sciences into a well thought-out business case. Through the Proefdiervrij Venture Challenge, the impact of test animal-free research is increased, for accelerating the transition to a test animal-free world.

And the winner is…
VEO is the winner of the Proefdiervrij Venture Challenge 2023! Researchers Giulia Moreni, Inés García Rodríguez, Adithya Sridhar, Dasja Pajkrt, Angelica Reitsma and Carlemi Calitz from Amsterdam UMC, as team VEO, are developing human organoids of the respiratory tract, intestinal tract and brain to study the infection of human viruses in their natural environment. The team aims to use these organoids on a large scale for research into viral diseases in humans and preclinical research into viral drugs, thereby replacing the laboratory animals (such as mice) used in this type of research. VEO received €25,000 from Proefdiervrij to further develop their startup!