When Demetri Maxim was seven years old, his mother’s kidneys stopped working. She was put on dialysis, which meant that she had to go to the hospital four times a week to have her blood filtered by a machine since her own kidneys could no longer function independently.
Two years later, Maxim’s mother received a kidney transplant. Although the surgery was successful and allowed her to lead a relatively normal life, it wasn’t the end of his family’s struggle with kidney disease. It turned out that Maxim had inherited the disease, Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD), from her.
About one in seven Americans has Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), and about 10% of those CKD cases are due to a genetic condition. Maxim has been obsessed with finding a cure for himself and others ever since he was in high school.
Maxim’s “Aha!” moment occurred in 2021, when Nature Magazine published a study proving that PKD is reversible in mice using CRISPR technology. At the time, he was pursuing his graduate degree in computational biology at Stanford while simultaneously engaging in kidney research under his professor, Vivek Bhalla.
Although Maxim was convinced that gene therapy could reverse PKD, the biggest hurdle was creating a mechanism to deliver the drugs directly to the diseased cells.
To solve this critical challenge, he founded Nephrogen in 2022, a biotech startup that uses AI and advanced screening to develop a specialized delivery system for safely getting gene-editing medicines into the exact cells in the kidney. Nephrogen is one of the 20 finalists in Startup Battlefield, part of TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.
After three years of development, Maxim claims Nephrogen has succeeded in creating a delivery mechanism that is 100 times more efficient at transporting medicine to the kidney than the “vehicles” currently approved by the FDA.
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The next major step for Nephrogen is to advance its novel delivery mechanism, along with a drug the startup developed, into clinical studies, which Maxim anticipates will begin in 2027. To support this, the company is raising a $4 million seed round.
Maxim intends to participate in the clinical study himself, given the significant challenges he faces living with PKD.
“You get a lot of back pain. You have to go to the hospital a lot. You are on this drug that’s supposed to slow the progression, but it doesn’t really do anything. Just makes you pee all the time,” he said, adding that there is always a risk that his disease will progress to require dialysis.
This makes Nephrogen’s approach all the more critical, as its success could cure him of PKD entirely.
If you want to hear from Nephrogen firsthand, and see dozens of additional pitches, attend valuable workshops, and make the connections that drive business results, head here to learn more about this year’s Disrupt, held October 27 to 29 in San Francisco.
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#Biotech #Nephrogen #combines #gene #therapy #reverse #kidney #disease #check #TechCrunch #Disrupt #TechCrunch
![Europe got its own TBPN-style live show, and everyone’s angling for a guest spot | TechCrunch
The European answer to TBPN is here and ready to go live five days a week, starting June 27.
Luke Knight and Ronan Chambers first launched the London-based European Technology Network (ETN) last October, breaking down tech trends and news during a two-day-a-week live stream. Right now, the show is live-streamed on X and YouTube and has garnered more than 5 million views.
On Monday, the network announced a .6 million seed round from top players in the media ecosystem, including Powerhouse Capital, Axel Springer SE (which owns Business Insider and Politico), the popular media publication LadBible, and angel investors from OpenAI and DeepMind. With this fresh capital, the network is announcing its largest expansion yet.
It’s now moving into a big studio in Kings Cross (where all the hot London AI startups are situated), expanding the team (right now of just eight), launching a newsletter, and is, starting today, moving into a five-day-a-week live show schedule, which will soon see Knight and Chambers interview the likes of George Robson (a partner at Sequoia) and Rishi Sunak (former UK Prime Minister and senior advisor to Anthropic and Microsoft).
Speaking to TechCrunch, Knight and Chambers said ETN has already become a hot stop on the press tour for European startups — they’ve spoken to the founder of Synthesia, the CFO of Legora, the founder of Granola, and Kanishka Narayan, the UK’s first AI Minister. They’ve even had American investors stop by the show when they are in town, including one from Andreessen Horowitz.
“ETN was born out of a gaping hole in the industry,” Chambers told TechCrunch. “It’s centered around pace.” He said the current media ecosystem in the UK cannot keep up with how fast the tech scene is moving. For example, so far this year, London startups have raised .7 billion according to Dealroom. Six companies have raised more than 0 million: Wayve, Superintelligence, ElevenLabs, Recursive, Ineffable Intelligence, and Isomorphic Labs, the latter three of which were founded by DeepMind alumni.
“These are things that have never happened in Europe before,” Chambers continued, referring to the speed at which capital is flowing through the ecosystem. As the show became more popular, Chambers said they were getting around 70 pitches a week from guests looking to come on the show. They would try and cram 12 interviews into two hours, twice a week, but eventually it got too much. “We needed an outlet that could move at the pace of that,” he said of both the interest in the show and how fast Europe’s tech ecosystem is moving, “which is the reason we’re going from two days a week to five days a week.”
The five-day format will look quite similar to the two-day format. There will be a live show from 12 p.m. UK time to 3 p.m., breaking down trending stories, and then for two hours, they will have guests on the show talking about whatever they want. Chambers said they also want to start hosting debates, roundtables, and a Shark Tank-style pitching session on the show.
“We want to make it as useful as we can for the ecosystem,” Chambers said. “There needs to be more discourse around AI in Europe. There needs to be more discourse around venture capital and cash flowing into the ecosystem. There needs to be more discourse around the amazing things that are happening in the tech ecosystem, and our role is to be the stage in which people can shout about all the amazing things they’re doing.”
The show makes its money from ad dollars, like most media publications, and big-name sponsors already include prediction market Polymarket, blockchain company Base, and the AI audio darling ElevenLabs.
When asked about the influence TBPN has had on them, Knight and Chambers said they indeed do look at John Coogan and Jordi Hays, founders of TBPN (which recently sold to OpenAI for what some say was a nine-figure sum), as pioneers of this new tech media ecosystem. The show became a place for tech guests to appear and chat with friendly faces, announcing new product releases, hires, or funding news. “My thinking was, if we can have an ITV and a BBC, why wouldn’t we have a regional version of this?” Chambers continued.
Europe is a big place, though, with more than 40 different countries and over 200 languages spoken (24 of which are recognized by the European Union). Chambers said that although ETN will report from London, he and Knight are making an effort to bring on guests from across the continent. Aside from bringing guests into the studio, they also travel to the hottest tech conferences around Europe. For example, they’ve broadcast from the Panathenaea Conference in Athens and from inside the Louvre in Paris for the RAISE AI Summit.
“You have all these different cultures, these different minds coming together and creating different products,” Chambers said. “You get a taste of what makes [Europe] a superpower.”
With all this, they said they would never turn an American founder away should they want to come on the show. “It’s a European technology network, but we think there’s massive [global] opportunities,” Chambers said. Knight added to that, noting how often conversations pit the European tech ecosystem against that of the U.S.
“We are globally optimistic,” Knight said. “We are pushing global prosperity from Europe. Wherever you want to go and build your company, wherever is the best place to go and build that company, go and do that, and we will shout for you to go and do that.”
He and Chambers also don’t necessarily see themselves as journalists; rather, they consider themselves tech insiders curious about what is going on and why. They also don’t see themselves as replacing traditional media and instead intend to work in tandem with those publications. “We rely on traditional media,” Chambers said, adding that is how they find much of the news that they to talk about on ETN.
Overall, the duo hopes to help document the stories coming from the new wave of European success, from ElevenLabs in London to Lovable in Stockholm, to help the upcoming generation understand that technology is one way to drive a nation forward.
Discussing the impact of European success stories, Chambers said, “It riles up the next generation to the point where it’s no longer cool to finish university and go into banking or consulting. People want to leave university and go straight into building a startup, and I think that’s an amazing thing.”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Europe #TBPNstyle #live #show #everyones #angling #guest #spot #TechCrunchEurope,London,UK](https://i3.wp.com/techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/ETN.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&ssl=1 "Europe got its own TBPN-style live show, and everyone’s angling for a guest spot | TechCrunch
The European answer to TBPN is here and ready to go live five days a week, starting June 27.
Luke Knight and Ronan Chambers first launched the London-based European Technology Network (ETN) last October, breaking down tech trends and news during a two-day-a-week live stream. Right now, the show is live-streamed on X and YouTube and has garnered more than 5 million views.
On Monday, the network announced a .6 million seed round from top players in the media ecosystem, including Powerhouse Capital, Axel Springer SE (which owns Business Insider and Politico), the popular media publication LadBible, and angel investors from OpenAI and DeepMind. With this fresh capital, the network is announcing its largest expansion yet.
It’s now moving into a big studio in Kings Cross (where all the hot London AI startups are situated), expanding the team (right now of just eight), launching a newsletter, and is, starting today, moving into a five-day-a-week live show schedule, which will soon see Knight and Chambers interview the likes of George Robson (a partner at Sequoia) and Rishi Sunak (former UK Prime Minister and senior advisor to Anthropic and Microsoft).
Speaking to TechCrunch, Knight and Chambers said ETN has already become a hot stop on the press tour for European startups — they’ve spoken to the founder of Synthesia, the CFO of Legora, the founder of Granola, and Kanishka Narayan, the UK’s first AI Minister. They’ve even had American investors stop by the show when they are in town, including one from Andreessen Horowitz.
“ETN was born out of a gaping hole in the industry,” Chambers told TechCrunch. “It’s centered around pace.” He said the current media ecosystem in the UK cannot keep up with how fast the tech scene is moving. For example, so far this year, London startups have raised .7 billion according to Dealroom. Six companies have raised more than 0 million: Wayve, Superintelligence, ElevenLabs, Recursive, Ineffable Intelligence, and Isomorphic Labs, the latter three of which were founded by DeepMind alumni.
“These are things that have never happened in Europe before,” Chambers continued, referring to the speed at which capital is flowing through the ecosystem. As the show became more popular, Chambers said they were getting around 70 pitches a week from guests looking to come on the show. They would try and cram 12 interviews into two hours, twice a week, but eventually it got too much. “We needed an outlet that could move at the pace of that,” he said of both the interest in the show and how fast Europe’s tech ecosystem is moving, “which is the reason we’re going from two days a week to five days a week.”
The five-day format will look quite similar to the two-day format. There will be a live show from 12 p.m. UK time to 3 p.m., breaking down trending stories, and then for two hours, they will have guests on the show talking about whatever they want. Chambers said they also want to start hosting debates, roundtables, and a Shark Tank-style pitching session on the show.
“We want to make it as useful as we can for the ecosystem,” Chambers said. “There needs to be more discourse around AI in Europe. There needs to be more discourse around venture capital and cash flowing into the ecosystem. There needs to be more discourse around the amazing things that are happening in the tech ecosystem, and our role is to be the stage in which people can shout about all the amazing things they’re doing.”
The show makes its money from ad dollars, like most media publications, and big-name sponsors already include prediction market Polymarket, blockchain company Base, and the AI audio darling ElevenLabs.
When asked about the influence TBPN has had on them, Knight and Chambers said they indeed do look at John Coogan and Jordi Hays, founders of TBPN (which recently sold to OpenAI for what some say was a nine-figure sum), as pioneers of this new tech media ecosystem. The show became a place for tech guests to appear and chat with friendly faces, announcing new product releases, hires, or funding news. “My thinking was, if we can have an ITV and a BBC, why wouldn’t we have a regional version of this?” Chambers continued.
Europe is a big place, though, with more than 40 different countries and over 200 languages spoken (24 of which are recognized by the European Union). Chambers said that although ETN will report from London, he and Knight are making an effort to bring on guests from across the continent. Aside from bringing guests into the studio, they also travel to the hottest tech conferences around Europe. For example, they’ve broadcast from the Panathenaea Conference in Athens and from inside the Louvre in Paris for the RAISE AI Summit.
“You have all these different cultures, these different minds coming together and creating different products,” Chambers said. “You get a taste of what makes [Europe] a superpower.”
With all this, they said they would never turn an American founder away should they want to come on the show. “It’s a European technology network, but we think there’s massive [global] opportunities,” Chambers said. Knight added to that, noting how often conversations pit the European tech ecosystem against that of the U.S.
“We are globally optimistic,” Knight said. “We are pushing global prosperity from Europe. Wherever you want to go and build your company, wherever is the best place to go and build that company, go and do that, and we will shout for you to go and do that.”
He and Chambers also don’t necessarily see themselves as journalists; rather, they consider themselves tech insiders curious about what is going on and why. They also don’t see themselves as replacing traditional media and instead intend to work in tandem with those publications. “We rely on traditional media,” Chambers said, adding that is how they find much of the news that they to talk about on ETN.
Overall, the duo hopes to help document the stories coming from the new wave of European success, from ElevenLabs in London to Lovable in Stockholm, to help the upcoming generation understand that technology is one way to drive a nation forward.
Discussing the impact of European success stories, Chambers said, “It riles up the next generation to the point where it’s no longer cool to finish university and go into banking or consulting. People want to leave university and go straight into building a startup, and I think that’s an amazing thing.”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Europe #TBPNstyle #live #show #everyones #angling #guest #spot #TechCrunchEurope,London,UK")
![Logitech G Becomes Official Headset Partner for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4
The Logitech G series has just announced a partnership with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. In the partnership, Logitech G will serve as the Official PC Peripheral Partner, while the Logitech G ASTRO Series will be the Official Headset Partner for the game. The partnership will also introduce exclusive in-game rewards, creator-focused experiences, and community events for players.
Logitech G will offer all its PC gaming accessories to enhance the gaming experience for fans of Modern Warfare 4. Some of the gaming products include mice, keyboards, headsets, and other peripheral devices. It says the hardware is designed to deliver consistent performance during every match and support both casual and competitive players.
As part of the collaboration, Logitech G has introduced the Play for Prestige campaign. It includes exclusive in-game rewards designed around the Logitech G brand. Events such as creators’ events, streamer partnerships, community tournaments, and game challenges will be part of the campaign. Logitech G will give away gaming equipment during the event as an added bonus to the gamers.
New Features for Creators and Streamers
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOXi9hjss50[/embed]
Creators and streamers will also benefit from the collaboration. Streamlabs provides AI-driven overlays, automatic highlight capture, and custom streaming software. The collaboration also brings interactive features influenced by the game Modern Warfare 4. Logitech G HUB offers customized Audio EQ and LIGHTSYNC RGB.
This partnership extends Logitech G’s long-standing connection with Call of Duty. The company emphasized that ASTRO headsets have been part of the franchise for more than 10 years. Logitech G intends to keep providing its support to casual and professional gamers using its equipment. The company is also dedicated to developing itself within the field of esports.
Launch Date and Availability
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 will launch on October 23, 2026. Players can already pre-order the game for Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5. PC players can pre-purchase it through Battle.net and Steam. The game will also arrive on Nintendo Switch 2, with pre-orders opening later this year.
#Logitech #Official #Headset #Partner #Call #Duty #Modern #WarfareCall Of Duty](https://i3.wp.com/fossbytes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/modern-warfare-4-1.jpg?ssl=1 "Logitech G Becomes Official Headset Partner for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4
The Logitech G series has just announced a partnership with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. In the partnership, Logitech G will serve as the Official PC Peripheral Partner, while the Logitech G ASTRO Series will be the Official Headset Partner for the game. The partnership will also introduce exclusive in-game rewards, creator-focused experiences, and community events for players.
Logitech G will offer all its PC gaming accessories to enhance the gaming experience for fans of Modern Warfare 4. Some of the gaming products include mice, keyboards, headsets, and other peripheral devices. It says the hardware is designed to deliver consistent performance during every match and support both casual and competitive players.
As part of the collaboration, Logitech G has introduced the Play for Prestige campaign. It includes exclusive in-game rewards designed around the Logitech G brand. Events such as creators’ events, streamer partnerships, community tournaments, and game challenges will be part of the campaign. Logitech G will give away gaming equipment during the event as an added bonus to the gamers.
New Features for Creators and Streamers
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOXi9hjss50[/embed]
Creators and streamers will also benefit from the collaboration. Streamlabs provides AI-driven overlays, automatic highlight capture, and custom streaming software. The collaboration also brings interactive features influenced by the game Modern Warfare 4. Logitech G HUB offers customized Audio EQ and LIGHTSYNC RGB.
This partnership extends Logitech G’s long-standing connection with Call of Duty. The company emphasized that ASTRO headsets have been part of the franchise for more than 10 years. Logitech G intends to keep providing its support to casual and professional gamers using its equipment. The company is also dedicated to developing itself within the field of esports.
Launch Date and Availability
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 will launch on October 23, 2026. Players can already pre-order the game for Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5. PC players can pre-purchase it through Battle.net and Steam. The game will also arrive on Nintendo Switch 2, with pre-orders opening later this year.
#Logitech #Official #Headset #Partner #Call #Duty #Modern #WarfareCall Of Duty")
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