Today's rapid diagnostic tests face a fundamental trade-off: you can have speed and affordability, or you can have accuracy. For patients who need answers quickly, such as a patient experiencing chest pain in an emergency room, a child with respiratory symptoms or someone suspected of having had a cardiac event, the difference between what is available at the bedside and what is only possible in a laboratory can cost lives and delay treatment decisions.

Amplifold is changing this equation.

Why This Matters

The lateral flow test, that simple paper strip you've used in a COVID test or a pregnancy test, hasn't meaningfully evolved in decades. It's fast, cheap, and requires no additional equipment. But there's a catch: in many cases, it only catches about 50% to 80% of the cases it's supposed to detect. For many serious conditions, that's simply not good enough.

Consider cardiac troponin. Clinical guidelines say doctors should act immediately if they detect certain biomarker concentrations that signal heart damage. The problem: standard rapid tests in practices and emergency rooms can't detect those lower concentrations. Clinicians therefore face a choice: either send the patient for an expensive, time-consuming laboratory test, or risk missing an early intervention window.

Until now, there was no solution that could deliver affordability, simplicity, speed, and accuracy all at once.

Why Amplifold

The Munich-based team at Amplifold has engineered exactly that using DNA origami: a nanotechnology technique that builds precise structures from DNA strands.

Here's the technical insight: in a traditional rapid test, you attach detection labels (e.g. tiny gold particles that appear red) to antibodies that bind to the disease marker. The signal from one gold particle isn't always strong enough to be detected if the marker concentration is very low. Amplifold's innovation is to use DNA origami as a beacon– a nanoscale structure that holds many gold particles in precise positions around the same antibody binding site. This precision in design dramatically amplifies the signal, making it 55 to 125 times stronger than conventional tests. This is achieved while adding only one cent to the manufacturing cost at scale.

The result is quite extraordinary: a clinical validation showed that Amplifold's troponin test detects cardiac damage at the 14 ng/L concentration where treatment decisions change (the clinical cutoff in Germany). The market-leading rapid tests from global diagnostics manufacturers miss it. In a respiratory testing Amplifold detected RSV and COVID-19 in samples where other rapid tests returned negative results, matching the sensitivity of expensive lab tests while maintaining the speed and simplicity of a paper strip.

The versatility and capital efficiency impressed us the most. Because Amplifold's technology takes a platform approach, it can be used with almost any lateral flow assay, including those for troponin, respiratory viruses, stroke markers and drug screening, to name but a few. The company isn't inventing new biomarkers or new disease detection principles; it's making existing tests dramatically more sensitive, and the path to scale is very efficient. Amplifold doesn't need to build manufacturing infrastructure or create demand from scratch; it can leverage established distributors and contract manufacturers already embedded in the diagnostics supply chain.

Amplifold’s technology was developed by Maximilian Urban and colleagues in Prof. Liedl’s lab at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU). Their work was also recently published in a Nature Communications paper.^[1] Moving forward, the company’s management team will consist of Maximilian Urban and Enzo Kopperger, accomplished DNA nanotechnology researchers with extensive experience in building nanoscale structures, and Federico Buersgens, whom we previously supported as a co-founder of GNA Biosolutions (acquired by Hewlett Packard).  We built a strong relationship through that earlier investment, which we highly value. We've seen Federico navigate the diagnostic industry, understand regulatory pathways, and execute at scale. He is now applying these skills alongside Max and Enzo's world-class nanotechnology expertise to solve one of the most persistent problems in diagnostics. Together, they possess the scientific expertise and entrepreneurial experience required to transform laboratory breakthroughs into clinical impact.

What's Next

Amplifold has raised €5 million in seed financing co-led by Matterwave Ventures and XISTA Science Ventures, with participation from Bayern Kapital, b2venture, and Becker Ventures (part of Labor Becker Group). The capital will be used to fund critical milestones of the company’s development through 2027.

We're investing in a technology platform that has the potential to set a new standard for point-of-care testing. Millions of patients will benefit from faster and more accurate diagnostics. Clinicians will have the precision they need without incurring additional costs or complexity. Furthermore, it makes us proud that such an important innovation in the healthcare domain comes out of Europe, which is a testament to the continent's ability to produce cutting-edge solutions.

That's why we invested in Amplifold.

‍

^[1] Heini Ijäs, Julian Trommler, Linh Nguyen, Stefan van Rest, Philipp Nickels, Tim Liedl & Maximilian Urban, DNA origami signal amplification in lateral flow immunoassays, Nature Communications volume 16, Article number: 3216 (2025) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-57385-6

‍