Moon Surgical announces first clinical cases in the U.S. using Maestro System

Moon Surgical announces CE Mark for its commercial Maestro System

FDA approves Limflow System in patients with chronic limb-threatening ischemia and no suitable endovascular or surgical revascularization options

Moon Surgical's first-in-human trials feature in major surgical publication

Gradient Denervation Technologies closes €14m Series A led by Sabadell Asabys

Cécile Dupont, Sofinnova MD Start Partner, selected as In Vivo Rising Leader

MD Start

Advanced Perfusion Diagnostics

BrightHeart

Capital

CorWave

Endoron Medical

Gradient Denervation Technologies

HEPTA Medical

Julier Medical 

Crossover

LimFlow

May Health 

Moon Surgical

preCARDIA

SafeHeal

Medtech acceleration

The MD Start Strategy is Sofinnova’s in-house medtech accelerator. The team’s hands-on entrepreneurial expertise contributes to the platform's global leadership in company building.

Anne Osdoit

Lukas Guenther

Anne has been running our in-house MedTech accelerator, MD Start, since she came on board as a partner in 2015.

She embodies the MD Start team’s hands-on approach: Anne is the founding and current CEO of both Gradient Denervation Technologies and Moon Surgical. She is a Board member of both SafeHeal and May Health — two companies where she was also founding CEO.

“What I like about this job is that it is about building products and companies,” Osdoit says. “It is very diverse. It is in different therapeutic areas, in different spaces with different technologies.”

Prior to joining Sofinnova, Anne held several key positions at Mauna Kea Technologies, a Paris-based medical technology company with global presence, developing a disruptive “optical biopsy” technology. She was closely involved in multiple financing rounds, including the company’s initial public offering on the Paris Euronext, a highly successful operation and the largest public listing for the sector that year.

Anne is an active angel investor and an independent board member of FeetMe and Cardiologs Technologies, two Paris-based e-health startups. Cardiologs was purchased by Philips in 2021.

Anne is a trained biomedical engineer from Ecole Polytechnique of Paris, France and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. She holds additional degrees in Biostatistics and epidemiology applied to clinical trials (Université Pierre et Marie Curie), as well as Corporate Finance (London School of Economics).

Lukas joined us in 2019 and is a partner on the MD Start team. He is a medical doctor and was trained in General Surgery at the Universities of Heidelberg and Freiburg.

As a former surgeon, the hands-on approach at MD Start appealed to him. "We're not up there in the balcony giving the thumbs up or thumbs down" as entrepreneurs make their pitches, he says. “We build the story; we bring in the necessary assets; we create the company, often from scratch."

Lukas was a postdoctoral scientist at the Novartis Center for Immunobiology at Harvard University, where he conducted preclinical research on protective genes. Subsequently, Lukas completed a Fellowship at the University of Minnesota as Organ Harvest Fellow, where he participated in NIH-sponsored clinical trials on islet transplantation.

In 2007, he joined the life science investment team at Wellington Partners, a pan-European venture capital firm where he advanced to investment director and invested in several European early stage life science companies.

Lukas holds a summa cum laude doctorate from Humboldt University (Charité) Berlin. He also obtained a Global One MBA degree from RSM Erasmus.


Cécile joined the Sofinnova MD Start team in 2019. She is currently CEO of BrightHeart, a Sofinnova MD Start III portfolio company. She also brings her operational and strategic expertise to Endoron, another investment from MD Start III, to accelerate the development of the company's highly disruptive technology. 

Prior to that, she was CEO of HEPTA Medical, COO of Gradient Denervation Technologies, and director of clinical, regulatory and market access at SafeHeal, the first company created by MD Start II, where she managed the execution of the first-in-human study and regulatory approvals in the EU and US.

Unofficially, she is MD Start’s regulatory expert.

“We need to make sure we start with the right strategy from the get-go because the regulatory strategy is one of the key drivers of the entire project,” she says. “It will drive the clinical strategy, but also the R&D strategy. This is really a key entry point for the project.”

Prior to joining MD Start, Cécile held various clinical, marketing and regulatory positions in both mature and start-up medical device organizations in the fields of endoscopy, pulmonology, dermatology, surgery and diabetes care; for single and multi-use disposable products and capital equipment.

Cécile holds a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering from UTC (Université de Technologies de Compiègne) in France, Dalarna University (Sweden) and Favoloro University (Buenos Aires) in Argentina. She also has a degree in corporate finance from HEC in Paris. 

Marion joined our MD Start team in 2019. She is the CEO of Ablacare, after having managed the execution of the first-in-human study and regulatory approvals in the E.U. and the U.S. for the company.

She enjoys MD Start’s fast-paced, close-to-the-ground approach. “My day-to-day is operational and hands-on, focused on building products and creating value for patients and clinicians with breakthrough innovations,” she says.

Marion also plays a big part in managing the MD Start deal flow, the identification and evaluation of the most promising ideas for incubation. She says that to get a full picture of an idea's potential, the MD Start team taps into collective intelligence, talking to people in different parts of the world who are entrepreneurs, purchasing managers, key opinion leaders and knowledgeable clinicians.

Prior to joining MD Start, Marion was the head of operations of Cardiologs Technologies, a French medtech start-up that uses artificial intelligence and cloud technology to provide advanced screening for atrial fibrillation and other heart rhythm disorders. Philips agreed in November 2021 to buy Cardiologs.

Marion holds a Bachelor in Biomedical Science from Imperial College London, and a Master’s in Management (major in Entrepreneurship) from HEC Paris.


Gérard is a serial entrepreneur in the Medical Devices field.

In the 1980s, he founded Technomed International, a company developing noninvasive therapeutic technologies dedicated to urology. He grew the company to its IPO with 50 million euros in sales and significant profitability.

In the 90s, he founded 2 companies: IMMI, which developed image-guided robotic systems for neurosurgery, and SOMETEC, a maker of noninvasive hemodynamic monitoring systems for anesthesiology and intensive care. Both companies were acquired by U.S.-based companies, ISS and ARROW International respectively.

From 2008 to 2010 he turned around Spine Vision, a developer and manufacturer of spinal implants, as its CEO.

In 2009 Gerard cofounded MD Start, a European incubator for innovative MedTech companies, which created 8 companies. The idea was, he said, “to bridge this gap from the idea of the inventor to possible financing by VCs.”

Before becoming an entrepreneur, Gérard began his career with Thomson Group, where he held various management positions in the MedTech branch for over 15 years.

Gérard is an engineer from E.C.E. Paris. He is Executive Chairman of MD Start II, Chairman of CorWave, Chairman of Moon Surgical, Chairman of HEPTA Medical and sits on the Board of Directors of LimFlow, Pixium Vision and Altamir.

Close	Fund	AMT
2008	MD Start I	€8.2 million
2015	MD Start II	€10.3 million
2019	Sofinnova MD Start III	€63 million

TheTeam