Each month, Start-Up presents a comprehensive review of young, private life science companies that have recieved venture funding during the month, including companies in the pharmaceutical, medical device, diagnostic and research instrumentation & reagent sectors.

Swiss start-up Covalys Biosciences AG believes it has developed a protein tag technology that will improve the way researchers label, immobilize and purify proteins. It's proprietary SNAP-tag, says the company, is more stale and versatile than existing protein tag technologies and can be employed anywhere proteins are studied.