Eascra Biotech is headed to space this May. But first, the Boston company is making a pit stop in Austin, Texas.
Eascra is one of just two Boston companies named a finalist for the 15th annual South by Southwest (SXSW) Pitch event. General Prognostics GPx, a Boston company developing what it calls “bloodless blood tests,” was also named a finalist.
The tech, film, music, education and culture festival has taken place in Texas since 1987. Attendees can hear about the latest scientific discoveries from NASA’s Webb Space Telescope team one day and about childcare and parenting in sport from Allyson Felix, the most decorated track and field Olympian in history, the next.
For the tech community, the highlight of the festival is the pitch event, which will take place March 11-12 and feature 40 technology companies from across the world. SXSW said it received 740 applications for its pitch event this year. An advisory board narrowed the applicant pool to 40 companies across eight categories: AI, robotics and voice; enterprise and smart data; entertainment, media and content; food, nutrition and health; future of work; innovative world technologies; metaverse and web3; and smart cities, transportation and logistics.
In March, the companies will travel to Austin and pitch before a panel of industry experts, media professionals, venture capitalists and angel investors. A winner from each category will be announced during an awards ceremony on March 12 at 6 p.m. CT.
Boston startups at SXSW
Eascra made headlines just a few weeks ago when it was awarded $1.8 million in grants from NASA. The biotech is developing Janus base nanomaterials, created by co-founder Yupeng Chen, that can be formed into tubes and filled with other materials such as mRNA, a therapy or a vaccine. This final product is then injected into a patient, co-founder Mari Anne Snow explained to BostInno last month.
Over the next two years, the company will receive its NASA funding to test its manufacturing processes in space. Snow said that gravity can cause inconsistencies in the very tiny nanomaterials they make. They think producing them without this force will create a more uniform result.
Eascra was also recently named a 2023 Startup to Watch by BostInno.
GPx says it wants to help chronic disease patients monitor their blood without “inconvenient clinic visits or the pain of needles and implants.” The company’s technology combines digital biomarkers gathered from a watch and blood biomarkers collected by patients in their homes. The data is then paired and GPx uses its datasets to build predictive algorithms for patient health.
Last year the company raised $3.5 million and announced a study of its technology for heart failure monitoring with University of Kansas Medical Center.
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