Olga Fontanellaz, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of INCAPTEK
Olga Fontanellaz, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of INCAPTEK
Olga Fontanellaz, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of INCAPTEK
Biography
Olga Fontanellaz is the co-founder and CEO of INCAPTEK, a Swiss deep-tech startup developing next-generation antibacterial coatings for surgical sutures and meshes. With a background spanning international project management, entrepreneurship, and public health, she leads the company's business strategy, partnerships, and regulatory pathway. She holds an MA in International Economics from the Graduate Institute of International Studies (now IHEID) in Geneva, Switzerland.
Her career has spanned managing large-scale public health projects in challenging environments such as Papua New Guinea, providing strategic management advice, resource mobilisation, and building public-private partnerships. A serial entrepreneur, Olga has founded several small businesses, primarily in Asia, giving her hands-on experience in turning ideas into viable commercial ventures. She is passionate about improving human health and is also the co-founder and President of Gene Learning Association, a non-profit that supports and advances scientific and biomedical research to improve the diagnosis and treatment of complex pathologies.
Interview
NanoSphere: Tell us a bit about yourself—your background, journey, and what led you to where you are today.
Olga: David Karp, founder of Tumblr, once said, “An entrepreneur is someone who has a vision and the desire to make it a reality.” I couldn't agree more. I have a clear vision of building a successful business and the drive to bring our coating technology to market to improve patients’ lives. Dreams are essential, but since my school days, I have lived by a simple principle: you must act to succeed - you can't wait passively for things to happen. I have built small businesses from the ground up, and I know what it takes to turn an idea into reality. I have always been drawn to new challenges - my professional career reflects that, and INCAPTEK is my greatest challenge yet.
What led me to INCAPTEK was the opportunity to bridge my diverse experience with deep science that has the potential to genuinely transform patient outcomes. This realisation led me to co-found INCAPTEK alongside a team of exceptional scientists - Yury Moshkin, Gleb Sukhorukov, a pioneer in controlled drug release and inventor of layer-by-layer microencapsulation, and Igor Radchenko. I recognised that we had something truly special: a technology that could solve a critical unmet medical need in surgical infection prevention. Building a deep-tech venture from the lab to the market is no small feat. But today, together with my team, I am fully committed to seeing it through - driving innovation in drug delivery and making a positive impact on surgical patients. At INCAPTEK, I bridge the gap between cutting-edge science and real-world clinical impact, transforming advanced drug delivery technologies from the lab into solutions that reach patients. I have long been guided by the words of French playwright Jean-François Collin d'Harleville (often misattributed to Napoleon): "Impossible is a word that I never say."
NanoSphere: Your background spans entrepreneurship, large-scale international projects, and cross-sector partnerships. How has that experience shaped the way you build innovation ecosystems around deep-tech platforms, especially when aligning science, regulation, manufacturing, and market needs?
Olga: Deep-tech innovations don't succeed in isolation - they require an ecosystem where science, business, and regulation work in concert. My experience across large-scale international projects, cross-sector partnerships and entrepreneurship has taught me that building this ecosystem starts with the customer. Before we even developed our prototype, we engaged in in-depth discussions with manufacturers to ensure our technology matched real market needs. This customer-first approach has been central to our strategy: customer engagement de-risks the technology, validates that we are solving a problem the industry genuinely cares about, and ensures we don't waste time developing solutions in search of a problem.
Regulatory strategy is equally non-negotiable. In MedTech, you cannot afford to treat regulation as an afterthought. From day one, we have approached regulatory pathways strategically - we carefully chose our initial focus to reduce or eliminate the need for lengthy pivotal trials. This strategic thinking extends to partnership building, where I structure collaborations that benefit both parties - our partners gain access to cutting-edge technology, while we gain validation, distribution channels, and a clear path to market.
Finally, I believe in assembling the right team. Innovations require scientific excellence - which is why we have Gleb Sukhorukov, a Forbes-recognised top scientist, as our CSO, and Yury Moshkin, an internationally renowned biologist, as our CTO. But they also require business acumen and commercial focus. Our team combines all of these strengths, allowing us to navigate the complex MedTech landscape and transform promising science into solutions that actually reach patients.
NanoSphere: INCAPTEK operates at the intersection of advanced materials, microencapsulation, and targeted drug delivery. From your perspective, what separates technologies that remain promising in the lab from those that achieve real industrial and clinical adoption at scale?
Olga: The difference between lab experiments and a commercial product comes down to three things: validated clinical need, manufacturability, and a clear customer value proposition.
First, the technology must address a genuine, persistent clinical problem. We realised that while surgical site infections affect millions annually, existing antibacterial coatings for surgical sutures and meshes fail to provide efficient infection prevention. This isn't a minor inconvenience - suture- and mesh-associated infections lead to prolonged hospital stays, readmissions, antibiotic resistance, and billions in healthcare costs. The problem is real, and current solutions simply don't work effectively.
Scalability is also paramount. Many promising lab technologies fail because they can't be manufactured cost-effectively at an industrial scale. Recognising this early, we designed our proprietary powder-coating technology to be inherently scalable - solvent-free, minimal waste, compatible with both absorbable and non-absorbable sutures, and preserving mechanical strength.
You must also have a compelling value proposition that customers recognise. From the start, our USP was clear: prolonged, constant, and sequential multi-drug release to help prevent infections, address antimicrobial-resistance challenges, and support healing and tissue regeneration. Crucially, our technology is compatible with non-absorbable sutures - a segment where existing coatings are virtually absent. We aren’t just incrementally better; we're offering a capability that doesn't exist today. And we aren’t selling a technology; we are offering a solution that reduces mortality risk, improves patient outcomes, and saves healthcare systems money, at a fraction of the cost of treating infections.
NanoSphere: If there’s one key message or insight you’d like to share with readers about the future of nanomedicine, what would it be?
Olga: The future of medicine isn't just about discovering new drugs - it's about delivering them intelligently. Nanomedicine gives us the power to deliver drugs at the right place, in the right dose, and at the right time. At INCAPTEK, we are turning surgical sutures and meshes from passive materials into active therapeutic platforms - preventing infections before they start, improving outcomes, and reducing healthcare costs. The question is no longer whether we can deliver drugs, but how intelligently we can do it.
Olga's references
- Website: www.incaptek.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/incaptek