Innovative strength from basic research

Eviive has its sights set on complicated particles: extracellular vesicles are difficult to detect, tiny - and at the same time a great source of hope for people suffering from cancer. They are sent out as messenger substances by cells to transmit biological "messages". This information is valuable for therapies against various cancers or tumors because it can reveal the communication between immune cells or between immune and cancer cells.

The team of experts, led by Eviive founders and immunologists Kevin Yim and Richard Chahwan, is developing a new procedure that should make this process more precise and at the same time speed it up - based on research work at UZH and experience gained during years of cooperation with the University Hospital Zurich. The idea: decoding the messages between the immune system and cancer cells should help to find the most suitable therapy for each patient - or even an answer to the question of whether a single treatment or a combination of several therapies is the best choice.

As an example, Yim cites a study on melanoma that was completed in early 2026. Using blood samples from 125 people affected by this skin cancer, the developers showed that they were able to accurately predict the success of treatments with a reliability of over 90 percent of those affected. Following these and other encouraging successes, the team at the young spin-off Eviive is now working on "scaling up" this innovative analytics. "We are simultaneously validating the analysis with external clinical networks in the EU and the US and pharmaceutical partners," explains Yim, "with the robust proof of applicability required in modern precision medicine."