Latvian fund LongeVC invested in US health-tech startup Melio

Latvian fund LongeVC invested in US health-tech startup Melio which offers rapid diagnostic solutions for bloodstream infections.

The startup uses novel DNA melting techniques and AI-driven insights, which help physicians develop treatment plans with culture-independent pathogen detection from blood, reducing hospital costs, testing wait times, and over-prescribing antibiotics. Melio especially focuses on timely identification of pathogens causing acute infections in newborns, and preventing the prescription to them of unnecessary antibiotics.

Melio’s diagnostics solution evaluates each pathogen cell in a blood sample using AI to analyze how its DNA unwinds, melts, or denatures. Its technology eliminates the time-consuming step of culturing microbes before identification, which currently takes three days. With Melio’s solution, the whole diagnostics process takes 1 day.

The startup will use the investment to accelerate platform development and expand clinical research.

LongeVC is a venture company with offices in Riga and Lugano (Switzerland). It was established in 2016 by Garri Zmudze, Sergey Jakimov, and Ilya Suharenko. A €35M fund backs startups at the early and seed stages across the US and Europe.

Melio was founded by Mridu Sinha in 2018. The company has headquarters in Santa Clara, California, US.