Pomegra
Spanish femtech iPremom closed a €15M seed led by Amadeus Capital Partners to expand its first-trimester RNA blood test that predicts preeclampsia months before symptoms appear.
- iPremom's MaiRa platform detects preeclampsia risk from a blood sample taken as early as 9 weeks into pregnancy, well before clinical symptoms emerge.
- The round was led by Amadeus Capital Partners via its APEX Technology Fund, with Asabys Partners and APEX Ventures co-investing.
- Clinical data underpinning the platform spans 26,000+ samples from 10,000+ pregnancies enrolled across 14 Spanish hospitals.
Lead
iPremom, the Valencia-based molecular diagnostics company, closed a €15 million seed round on September 2, 2026, led by Amadeus Capital Partners through its APEX Technology Fund, with participation from Asabys Partners and APEX Ventures. The capital is earmarked for completing clinical validation studies, expanding commercial availability of its MaiRa platform, and pursuing regulatory clearance in the EU and US. Valuation was not disclosed.
What Is MaiRa and How Does It Work?
MaiRa is a first-trimester blood test that analyzes cell-free RNA (cfRNA) signals circulating in maternal blood between weeks 9 and 14 of gestation. The biology it exploits is specific: in pregnancies that later develop preeclampsia - a hypertensive disorder that causes roughly 70,000 maternal deaths per year globally - the uterine lining fails to establish itself properly, a condition called decidualization resistance. That failure leaves a distinct molecular signature in the bloodstream months before any clinical symptom appears.
Standard obstetric care cannot flag high-risk pregnancies until after 20 weeks, when interventional options narrow considerably. A validated first-trimester signal shifts that window by 10 to 15 weeks - enough time for low-dose aspirin prophylaxis, intensified monitoring, or planned delivery timing to make a material difference in outcomes.
What Does the Clinical Evidence Show?
iPremom built MaiRa on data from the PREMOM study, a prospective clinical trial that enrolled 9,586 pregnant women across 14 Spanish hospitals between September 2021 and June 2024. The company has accumulated over 26,000 samples tied to more than 10,000 pregnancies. In a nested case-control analysis of 216 participants, the platform predicted both early-onset and late-onset preeclampsia before symptom onset.
PREMOM is one of the largest prospective maternal cohorts assembled in Spain, and its multi-site design gives iPremom's validation claims more weight than single-center data typically allows. The open question is real-world performance: case-control analyses, however well-designed, are not the same as prospective screening across an unselected obstetric population. Regulatory reviewers will want to see that data before clearing the test for broad clinical use.
Why Is Institutional Capital Moving Into Maternal Diagnostics?
Preeclampsia affects between 2% and 8% of pregnancies worldwide, carries outsized mortality risk for both mother and infant, and has no approved preventive treatment beyond aspirin - which is most effective when started early. A validated early-detection test would generate consistent utilization across obstetrics and maternal-fetal medicine practices at scale.
Amadeus Capital Partners, the Cambridge-based venture firm, has backed deep-tech and life sciences companies across Europe. Asabys Partners, with an established portfolio in Spanish biotech and medtech, brings regional expertise to the cap table. Both investors are effectively placing a wager that cfRNA liquid biopsy technology - now standard in oncology for detecting circulating tumor DNA - translates into obstetrics with comparable clinical and commercial returns.
From Research to Market
MaiRa is already commercially available through iPremom's own laboratory in Spain, making this a revenue-generating company at seed stage rather than a pre-product bet. Proceeds from the round will fund formal submissions under EU IVDR and pursue FDA clearance - a substantially higher regulatory bar. iPremom was founded in 2019 by reproductive medicine researcher Carlos Simón and Dr. Tamara Garrido, whose decade-plus of uterine biology research at the Carlos Simón Foundation, Valencia's INCLIVA biomedical institute, and the Universitat de València forms the scientific foundation. CEO Guillermo Ferrando Huertas leads the commercialization effort.
Outlook
iPremom enters its growth phase with a rare combination: a large proprietary dataset, a platform already generating clinical revenue, and a disease target with no comparable first-trimester detection alternative on the market. The path from validated research test to broad regulatory clearance is long, and real-world performance outside a research cohort remains to be established at scale. How fast the company moves through EU and US submissions - and what that data looks like - will determine whether the €15 million seed is a prelude to a larger clinical-stage raise or a bridge to commercial self-sufficiency.
