Some scientific questions disappear when an experiment ends. Others stay with you. For the researcher behind URiNBB, one persisted for years: could discoveries hidden deep within the molecular biology of cancer become a simpler, less invasive way to detect the disease?
Cancer can leave molecular traces in unexpected places. For the researcher behind URiNBB, years spent studying molecular oncology led her towards a particularly intriguing group of molecules: non-coding RNAs known as Transcribed Ultraconserved Regions, or T-UCRs.
Her team discovered that some of these molecules are strongly associated with bladder cancer. More importantly, they could be detected in urine. That finding opened the door to a much bigger question: could a molecular signal in something as simple as a urine sample help doctors detect and monitor bladder cancer? URiNBB grew from the attempt to find out.
Looking for what cancer leaves behind
Bladder cancer presents a particular diagnostic challenge. Many patients require long-term surveillance because the disease can recur. Yet detecting different grades of bladder cancer reliably using non-invasive methods remains difficult.
Low-grade tumours are especially important. Existing urinary biomarkers can struggle to detect them reliably, despite low-grade non-muscle invasive bladder cancer accounting for a substantial proportion of cases.
URiNBB is being developed to address this gap. Its approach uses a patented molecular signature based on T-UCRs and is designed to identify alterations associated with both low- and high-grade bladder cancer. Rather than introducing an entirely new laboratory technology, the team aims to analyse the signature using RT-PCR – a technique already widely used in diagnostic laboratories.
The long-term ambition is straightforward: provide clinically useful molecular information from a urine sample that could support diagnosis and monitoring and, potentially, help clinicians determine which patients require further investigation.
But reaching that point requires considerably more than discovering an interesting biomarker.
When a discovery must leave the laboratory
URiNBB did not begin as a business idea. It began with curiosity. For years, the research was about understanding cancer biology: identifying non-coding RNAs, characterising their behaviour and exploring their potential significance. Then the questions began to change.
Could these molecules become biomarkers? Could a scientific observation become a technology? And eventually: could that technology solve a problem for patients?
The transition happened gradually – from fundamental research to biomarker discovery, patent protection, technological development and clinical validation. Recognition through initiatives including Start Cup Campania helped reinforce the idea that the research might have value beyond academia.
But it also required its founder to look at her own work differently. The question was no longer simply, “Is it scientifically interesting?” It became: Does it solve a real problem, and can it become a sustainable solution?”
That shift sounds simple. For a scientist, it can represent an entirely different way of thinking.
When evidence is no longer enough
Scientific research teaches people to generate evidence. Entrepreneurship quickly teaches them that evidence is only one part of the journey. “There is a point where scientific evidence alone is no longer enough,” the founder explains.
Suddenly, questions about molecular biology sit alongside intellectual property, regulation, clinical validation, business models, market access, investment and technology transfer. There have been moments when the complexity made her question how far the project could realistically go.
What kept it moving was partly the science itself: another positive result, another biomarker validated, another step forward in the clinical study. But encouragement from clinicians and innovation programmes mattered too.
Each provided another reason to believe the original observation might have a life beyond a scientific publication. For her, the achievement is therefore not a single patent or award. It is the distance the idea has already travelled.
What began as an observation in fundamental molecular research has become a protected technology undergoing clinical validation, with the team now exploring how to turn it into a diagnostic product and build a spin-off around it.
Cancer is not one biological entity
One of URiNBB’s central ideas is that a diagnostic tool needs to recognise the complexity of the disease it is trying to detect. Bladder cancer does not behave identically across different grades.
The team is therefore developing what it describes as a dual-grade molecular signature, designed to detect molecular alterations associated with both low- and high-grade disease.
Preliminary findings have been encouraging, including in low-grade tumours, but the technology still needs further clinical validation before its diagnostic performance and eventual clinical role can be established.
That distinction matters. URiNBB’s story is not yet one of a diagnostic test ready for patients. It is the story of trying to build the evidence required for one to exist.
Learning a different kind of language
The science behind URiNBB is multidisciplinary. Researchers in molecular biology work alongside urologists who help connect the technology to clinical reality. The project also draws on expertise in artificial intelligence and data analysis, biosensors and nanotechnology.
The founder describes the team in three words: Curious. Resilient. Collaborative. There is a reason collaboration matters so much. Moving a diagnostic technology towards patients requires people who understand very different worlds – molecular biology and medicine, technology and regulation, investment and business. No single researcher can realistically master them all.
And for URiNBB’s founder, recognising that has become part of becoming an entrepreneur. “The science may start the journey,” she says, “but the people make it possible.”
From scientist to entrepreneur
That transition is also what brought URiNBB to BRIDGE. The team has demonstrated scientific potential and begun clinical validation. Now it needs to understand how that potential might become a sustainable business.
For its founder, BRIDGE therefore represents an opportunity to develop skills that academic research rarely teaches. She wants to better understand the diagnostics market, strengthen the business model, define a commercialisation strategy and learn how to communicate URiNBB’s value to investors and industrial partners.
Personalised mentoring was particularly important. Scientists, she argues, can naturally become absorbed by the technology itself. Entrepreneurship requires them to step outside it and ask how the innovation fits into a real market.
That is the transition URiNBB is navigating now: from knowing more about the science to understanding what it will take for the science to matter outside the laboratory.
The courage to move before everything is certain
Ask URiNBB’s founder to describe entrepreneurship in one word and she chooses courage. Not because entrepreneurs need to be fearless. Quite the opposite. Scientific training is built around reducing uncertainty. Experiments are designed to answer questions and strengthen evidence before conclusions are drawn.
Entrepreneurship sometimes requires movement before every answer is available. Her advice to other researchers reflects that experience: “Don’t wait until you think everything is perfect.” Instead, she argues, researchers should start by asking whether their discovery solves an important problem. They should speak to clinicians, patients, companies and potential users early, protect their intellectual property and remain prepared to adapt. Or, as the best advice she has received puts it: “Believe in your idea but be willing to change how you get there.”
A year from now, she hopes URiNBB will have strengthened its clinical evidence in a larger, multicentre cohort, progressed towards a standardised diagnostic prototype and established a clearer regulatory and commercialisation pathway. There is still considerable work between those ambitions and a test that could eventually be used in clinical practice. But the destination remains remarkably close to the question that started everything.
Could cancer detection become earlier, simpler and less invasive?
Years ago, it was a question inside a laboratory. Now, URiNBB is trying to discover whether it can become an answer.