Our exciting history

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Learn all about our exciting history

September 2009

Our exciting history starts in September 2009. Vanessa Vankerckhoven, now our CEO, was appointed as Innovation Manager at VAXINFECTIO after she obtained her PhD. Her aim was to bridge collaboration between VAXINFECTIO and the Department of Product Development (Artesis University College, now University of Antwerp). The idea for an intradermal vaccination device resulted from VAXINFECTIO’s key researchers who identified vaccine shortages during the pandemic H1N1 flu end 2009. Intradermal vaccination allows for smaller volumes while leading to an improved immune response, the so-called dose-sparing effect.

September 2010

A master thesis project ‘Vaxintradermal’ was initiated by VAXINFECTIO and Product Development at the University of Antwerp, Belgium following a few brainstorming sessions. Wouter Coemans, a Master student Product Development at The University of Antwerp, signed up for the project. The aim was to develop an easy to use injection device suited for highly accurate and painless drug delivery in the dermis, the skin layer underneath the epidermis or upper layer of the skin. Given the global need and potential of an intradermal injection device, Koen Beyers, Founder of Voxdale, a design and engineering company based in Antwerp, became Wouter Coemans’ industrial promotor for the ‘Vaxintradermal’ project.

September 2011

A grant from the Belgian Industrial Research and Development (BiR&D) allowed for further development of the intradermal injection device with three master students with different backgrounds: Ruben Camerlynck (Product Development), Charlotte Reypens (Applied Economics) and Timothi Van Mulder (Nursing and Obstetrics), who investigated the industrial design, usability and market potential of the device, respectively. All three of them were awarded by BiR&D. Vanessa Vankerckhoven was responsible for academic supervision and support for all students involved.

March 2013

Novosanis was founded as a spin-off company from the University of Antwerp following the successful collaboration between the VAXINFECTIO and Product Development (formerly Artesis University College) and Voxdale (Design & Engineering company), under the leadership of Vanessa Vankerckhoven who became CEO and Koen Beyers who became CTO. Novosanis was funded by a private investor Taste Invest next to subsidies from the Flemish Government and the European Commission. Novosanis obtained ISO 13485 certification for its quality management system. Under their wings design control was initiated for the intradermal injection device, renamed to VAX-ID, leading to the first prototypes. Novosanis was acquired by Orasure Technologies in January 2019.

December 2019

Timothi Van Mulder, Baekeland PhD student at Novosanis, completed his PhD research on VAX-ID. He successfully defended his thesis entitled ‘PIDIC – Platform for Intradermal Injections in Children: medical-technical research into intradermal injection in children and adolescents’ in December 2019. Several papers were published as part of his PhD work in leading, peer reviewed journals like vaccine. Read more: publications

December 2020

VAX-ID spun-out of Novosanis to a new entity Idevax BV, on December 8, 2020. Idevax is an innovative medical device company, based in Antwerp, Belgium. The company was founded by Vanessa Vankerckhoven, now our CEO and Koen Beyers, now our CTO. Daniele S. Vasconcelos joined Idevax on September 1st, 2021 as a Quality Assurance, Regulatory and Clinical affairs Manager. Later, Momen Rbeihat joined the company on August 1st, 2022 as Scientific and Clinical affairs Manager.

Our core business

Idevax develops, produces, and commercializes innovative medical devices that are being deployed in the field of prophylactic and therapeutic vaccination as well as lymphatic applications. Our flagship product line, VAX-ID® is suited for reliable intradermal injection with a high ease of use. It is an award-winning, patented skin drug delivery device. Currently, the newest generation of VAX-ID is in preparation for CE marking, FDA approval and large-scale manufacturing.

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