Cervical cancer screening, from Vilnius.
Cervixel develops CRISPR-based rapid diagnostic tests for cervical cancer, in service of the WHO 2030 elimination goal.
Why cervical cancer screening still fails — and what we're changing.
Cervical cancer remains one of the most preventable cancers in medicine, yet the World Health Organization recorded approximately 660,000 new cases and 350,000 deaths in 2022. The burden falls disproportionately on lower-income regions, where the laboratory infrastructure that conventional screening assumes simply does not exist.
The pipeline a typical screen depends on — a sample sent to a centralised lab, processed over days or weeks, returned to a clinician, and then communicated back to the patient — fails the people it is meant to serve. Many never start the process; many who start it never see the result.
Cervixel exists to change that pipeline structurally. By moving the molecular signal out of the reference laboratory, we want to compress sample-to-result into something a clinic, a community programme, or eventually a person can run on their own.
CRISPR, applied to screening.
CRISPR is a programmable molecular tool: it allows a test to recognise a specific genetic sequence with a degree of specificity that, until recently, lived only inside research-grade laboratories. Translating that capability into a diagnostic — one that runs reliably outside a reference lab, on a real-world sample — is the engineering problem at the heart of RapidCan.
Our work is on a CRISPR-based detection chemistry for cervical cancer markers, paired with a sample-to-result workflow designed to be operated by trained clinical staff rather than laboratory technicians. The objective isn’t a faster lab test; it’s a test that the lab is no longer required for.
RapidCan is undergoing CE marking review under the IVDR pathway, with clinical studies active. Performance characteristics will be communicated as those studies are published — we will not publish numbers we cannot defend in a peer-reviewed setting.
The same regulatory and methodological discipline the work demands is what we offer to biotech and pharmaceutical partners, and what we expect from any claim made on this site.
Two numbers that frame our work.
Women screened with a high-performance test by ages 35 and 45, per the WHO Global Strategy.
WHO target to eliminate cervical cancer as a public health problem worldwide.
Built in Vilnius.
“Cervical cancer is one of the most preventable cancers in medicine — and yet it still kills hundreds of thousands of women every year, mostly in places where today’s screening tools never reach. We started Cervixel because the science is finally ready to put accurate, early detection into someone’s hands at home, and because building from Europe gives us the regulatory rigour the world deserves.”
John Muhammadi, M.D., MBA
Founder & CEO
- Cambridge University
- Imperial College London
- London Business School
- Karolinska Institute
- KTH Royal Institute of Technology
- Uppsala University
- Stockholm School of Economics
- ISM University of Management and Economics (Vilnius)
- IMC Vilnius
Affiliations reflect academic backgrounds of founding team members. Listed institutions have not endorsed Cervixel.
Independent recognition for our work.
1st place — Hospiton Cancer Hackathon
Recognised for the early RapidCan concept against entries from clinical and engineering teams across Europe.
Invited to Cambridge University
Selected for an in-person research and translation programme at Cambridge to advance the diagnostic platform.
BSV Ventures Incubation
Shortlisted for BSV Ventures' #7 incubation programme — one of a small group of deep-tech startups selected from across Europe and the United States.
Partnership with Nacionalinis vėžio centras
Partnership with the National Cancer Center in Lithuania, supporting clinical translation and validation work.
Open a conversation.
Whether you’re a clinician evaluating RapidCan, a partner exploring a service engagement, or a researcher with shared interests, we’d like to hear from you.