Meet the Five Finalists in the King Faisal & Davos of Healthcare Innovation Challenge

Breakthrough innovation takes center stage today as the King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre (KFSHRC), Cure and C3 International bring the King Faisal & Davos of Healthcare Innovation Challenge to New York City. The Challenge is part of the 2025 C3 NYC Summit-Davos of Healthcare.

Far from a routine pitch competition, the Challenge offers startups with groundbreaking technological solutions global visibility and a chance to accelerate commercialization with leading clinical partners.

For the five competing startups, it’s a chance to validate their innovations and business models on an international stage for healthcare entrepreneurship. The winner will receive an opportunity to launch a pilot program with KFSHRC in Saudi Arabia with the potential to scale into a hospital-wide commercial agreement.

C3 NYC Summit-Davos of Healthcare

In addition to the Challenge, the 2025 C3 NYC Summit-Davos of Healthcare, organized by C3 International, features discussions on how advances in tech-driven healthcare can address current and future global challenges.

Founded in 2012, the annual C3 Summit is an one of the official side meetings of the UN General Assembly. The Summits, known as the Davos of Healthcare, have enabled public-private partnerships, investment in both U.S. and Arb businesses and promotion of the free exchange of commerce between the two regions.

King Faisal & Davos of Healthcare Innovation Challenge

The competition was designed for startups and entrepreneurs with minimum viable products in healthcare areas that align with the KFSHRC’s eight centers of excellence, which span cancer and genomics to neuroscience and transplantation. KFSHRC is a leading institution that delivers specialized healthcare, pioneers medical innovation, and advances research and education.

Introducing the Five Finalists

The Challenge aims to accelerate the growth and development of innovative healthcare solutions and bring new products to the market. The finalists' competing MedTech solutions address some of healthcare’s most pressing challenges: unlocking new frontiers in genomic editing, improving manufacturing of cell and gene therapies, predicting postpartum depression before it strikes, personalizing cancer treatments at scale, fixing hospital workflow bottlenecks, and unlocking new frontiers in genomic editing.

Here's a snapshot of each of the finalists — not only the healthcare problem they’re using the latest technology to solve, but what’s driving the people behind it.

Arbor Biotech, Ibrahim Al-Abri, Founder

Arbor Biotech is a leader in next-generation gene editing, using a proprietary AI/ML-driven discovery engine to develop a diverse portfolio of genomic editors. This technology can edit over 93 percent of the human genome and demonstrates up to a 30-fold improvement in editing efficiency.

Arbor's proprietary nucleases enable a variety of editing modalities, including knockdown, RT editing, nuclease excisions, and large insertions, differentiating their approach from first-generation methods.

Founder’s Vision:

“I was inspired to start my company to address a critical gap in the Gulf region, where patients with inherited diseases have been largely overlooked by global biotech companies. Growing up in the region, I saw that the traditional model of importing one-size-fits-all treatments wouldn't work.

“We're focused on localizing innovation by building a bridge between cutting-edge gene editing technology and the region's unmet medical needs. Our goal is to create a self-sustaining ecosystem that develops tailored therapies, trains local talent, and ultimately provides patients with earlier access to life-changing treatments.

“Winning this challenge would give us validation, showing investors and partners that our vision resonates with leading hospitals in the region. It would send a message that building biotech in the GCC is possible.”

BioCurie, Irene Rombel, Co-Founder and CEO

BioCurie is pioneering mechanistic AI (mAI) software to revolutionize the development and manufacturing of cell and gene therapies (CGT). The mAI BioCurie PlatformTM is a first-in-class, scalable digital solution that empowers biopharma companies, contract manufactures, and research hospitals to predict and optimize CGT production processes.

Designed to democratize AI-driven decision making for scientists and engineers, our patent-pending technology can be used across the product life cycle, including process optimization, scale-up, process monitoring, and automation. Our mAI software greatly reduces the time, cost, and risk while increasing the quality, yield, and reproducibility of each product, enabling customers to deliver lifesaving therapies that are safe, effective, and commercially viable.

Founder’s Vision:

“BioCurie’s AI-driven solution is addressing one of the main underlying causes of disparities in CGT access – the manufacturing challenge – to make these therapies faster, better, and cheaper.

“At Johnson & Johnson and Spark Therapeutics, I saw first-hand the great promise of CGT to revolutionize medicine and save millions of lives, as well as the technological production challenges that I predicted would hamper the industry. This inspired me to form BioCurie (named for Marie Curie) in May 2021. I joined forces with my Co-Founder and Chief Scientist, Professor Richard Braatz, PhD from MIT, the world leader in AI, machine learning, data modeling for biomanufacturing. We have built an exceptional team that includes the best and brightest engineers from MIT.

“Beyond adeno-associated virus gene therapy, we are applying our platform to other CGT modalities to maximize the impact of our technology in addressing unmet needs. In doing so, we will help our collaborators improve their processes and provide new insights, while at the same time expanding our AI platform to help many more patients in the future.

“Our technology will help bring CGTs from niche to mainstream medicine and provide equitable access to all patients, particularly those in underserved populations."

Dionysus Health, Alisa Marie Beyer, COO

Dionysus Health is a precision maternal diagnostics company developing the first biological tests to detect postpartum depression and related mood disorders, a critical gap that has left millions of women relying on outdated, unreliable screening tools.

Backed by more than a decade of NIH- and DoD-funded research and multiple patents in epigenetic biomarkers, the company is translating cutting-edge science into accessible, saliva- and blood-based tests that can empower earlier intervention, reduce complications, and improve outcomes for both mothers and babies.

Executive Insights:

“I joined Dionysus because it represents a rare and meaningful alignment of personal mission and professional purpose. As a mother who silently endured postpartum depression and anxiety, I know how isolating that experience can be. Fifty percent of women with PPD receive no treatment. They fall through the cracks—undiagnosed, untreated, and alone. It doesn’t have to be this way.

“Research suggests 50 percent of PPD cases begin during the third trimester but are dismissed as ‘normal’ pregnancy symptoms. With Dionysus myLuma TM test, science is finally saying: we can see it coming, and we can act early. This is a new standard for maternal mental health. We’re building something truly transformative.”

NarraLabs, Rayyan Alyahya, Founder

From NarraLabs comes NarraOS, a clinical operations workspace designed to replace the fragmented, chaotic "shadow system" that hospitals currently run on, often using WhatsApp and Excel spreadsheets to make critical patient care decisions.

NarraOS offers a unified platform that allows clinical teams to coordinate, communicate, and access real-time patient information and hospital protocols in one place. This not only makes daily work more efficient but also generates structured data that can be used for quality improvement, research, and generating documents like discharge notes.

Founder’s Vision:

"As a physician, I saw firsthand how brittle systems were. That problem became personal when I realized the kidney transplant waitlist my uncle was on was an Excel file. His life depended on someone remembering to update a spreadsheet.

“Clinicians knew what to do, but they were trapped using tools not built for medicine. We built NarraOS to fix this ‘shadow system.’ Our biggest challenge was earning trust from teams burned by slow solutions. We addressed this by designing NarraOS to be flexible like Excel, but auditable and automated, helping healthcare learn and adapt in real time. If we succeed, we'll show the world that a system of action is possible.”

Vivan Therapeutics, Laura Towart, Founder and CEO

Vivan Therapeutics is pioneering a new era of personalized cancer treatment by pairing one of the world’s deepest oncology datasets with advanced artificial intelligence.

The company uses patient-specific genetic information to engineer fruit fly “avatars” that allow rapid testing of thousands of drug combinations, identifying novel therapies even when standard treatments have failed. This approach has already extended lives in hard-to-treat cancers and is now available through Vivan’s TuMatch TM software, which delivers personalized treatment recommendations for patients worldwide.

Founder’s Vision:

“Growing up with entrepreneurial parents taught me to see problems as opportunities for innovation. I'm naturally driven to identify where people struggle and develop solutions using science and technology — never accepting ‘good enough’ as the answer.

“I founded Vivan Therapeutics to move beyond one-size-fits-all cancer treatment and give every patient the best possible chance at survival. Our platform, developed at Mount Sinai, creates patient-specific models to test thousands of drug combinations, identifying therapies even when standard care has failed. We’ve already discovered over 550 novel combinations, and our goal is to turn them into accessible oral therapies, transforming cancer treatment into something truly personalized and life changing.

“Winning this challenge would bring us significantly closer to our core mission — ensuring every cancer patient receives therapy precisely matched to their unique tumor profile.”