‘Genuine hospitality towards cutting edge tech companies’ – Pera Labs CEO on choosing Malta

“We chose Malta as our European headquarters not only because it’s sunny most of the year but also its’ genuine hospitality towards cutting edge tech companies from US, Canada, Israel and beyond,” says Pera Labs Founder and CEO Burak Özkösem, a longtime Ph.D. researcher of reproductive health.

The groundbreaking fertility tech company has opened an RDI centre in Malta, it was revealed on Tuesday.

The company uses artificial intelligence and lab-on-a-chip technology to help aspirational parents by assisting fertility clinics reduce their standard 70 per cent treatment failure rate. 

To this end, Pera Labs announced the start of research and development of an AI-powered sperm and egg selection technology for fertility treatments. 

The research and development places Malta at the centre of what is an international collaboration, with a Malta-based team of experts in reproductive health, deep-learning and microfluidics, teaming up with Pera Labs’s commercialization advisors at the University City Science Center in Philadelphia and Wainamics – Pera Labs’s award winning manufacturing partner in California, US and Austria. 

Further commenting on the company’s local operations, the Pera Labs CEO said:

“Our Malta base will be our headquarters for EU related CE Mark and GDPR compliance and regulatory affairs. With English being the official language, Malta has created an international startup friendly sandbox for companies’ growth and soft landing in Europe. 

Pera Labs’s Malta operations are accelerated by the €800,000 of financial support from Malta Enterprise, coupled with Pera Labs’ own financing.

“My experiences with the Malta Enterprise team from the application to due diligence and selection processes to project implementation phase have been very friendly and everybody has been very considering that our move began right in the middle of COVID-19 pandemic,” said Mr Özkösem.

“Our global expansion began with a major step, which was choosing Malta as our R&D facilities for developing AI-powered fertility treatment solutions to European couples and more. We are building the world’s first and only fully automated device that not only analyses sperm quality but also selects the best sperm cells for fertility treatments. 

“This patent pending technology, called SPERMAN®, unlike other systems, doesn’t harm sperm or egg cells during the analysis and separation processes. Moreover, our technology is safe and tackles the fertility issues in men and women pre-conception stage therefore not harming embryos at all.”

Kurt Farrugia, Malta Enterprise’s CEO on news of the announcement said, “Pera Lab’s pioneering technology for reproductive health has the potential to dramatically increase the success of fertility treatments and drive down their costs. We are looking forward for this highly-innovative company to join our growing local med-tech ecosystem and its developments to change lives in fertility clinics around the world.”