FH Angels backs Persperion Diagnostics in first investment for non-invasive glucose monitor

What's the deal? The US Food & Health (FH) Angels network has made its first investment in Persperion DiagnosticsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a medical device company building a non-invasive glucose monitor.

Its flagship product, the ConTAQ Sweat Glucose Monitor, replaces painful finger pricks with a 30-second sweat reading. Users press a finger to a reusable sensor strip to get a result.

The angel round funds Persperion's 12-month milestones: product delivery, a 50-subject pilot clinical trial, and an initial US Food and Drug Administration submission.

Why now? Roughly 853 million people live with diabetes worldwide, 40 million of them in the US.

Continuous glucose monitors offer an alternative, but their high cost and reliance on implanted sensors put them out of reach for many. Persperion pitches its device, the product of more than 10 years of biosensor research, as a cheaper, simpler option.

FH Angels, born out of the University of California, Davis, invests in early-stage US companies working on metabolic health and longevity.

What could go wrong? The device is still pre-market. The pilot trial and FDA submission both lie ahead, and regulatory clearance is far from guaranteed.

Sweat-based sensing also faces a technical hurdle: reading accurate glucose levels from low sweat volumes. Persperion says its patented sensor chemistry solves this, but clinical data must prove it.

The signal: Persperion's fingertip biosensing approach sits at the centre of a broader push to make metabolic monitoring non-invasive and affordable, extending beyond glucose to ketones and other biomarkers. As an early-stage company backed by FH Angels' first cheque, it must now convert a decade of biosensor research into clinical proof before that vision reaches the 853 million people living with diabetes worldwide.

Read more: Nutrition Insight

Image credit: bodytel