# Barbara Castellano

> Barbara Castellano is a Series A investor at Claris Ventures backing Health Care. See 7 investments, check sizes, portfolio. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: Angel Investor
- Fund: [Claris Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/claris-ventures)
- Location: Milan, Italy
- Total investments: 7
- Last investment: Feb 2025
- Lead investor: 86%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: https://it.linkedin.com/in/laura-iris-ferro-174a0220/en

Barbara Castellano is a Series A investor at Claris Ventures in Milan focused on Health Care and Medical Device. Barbara Castellano of Panakes Partners.

## Round sizes

| Stage | Round size |
| --- | --- |
| Series A | $7.7M–$16M |

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Health Care | 4 | 57% |
| Medical Device | 4 | 57% |
| Medical | 3 | 43% |
| Biotechnology | 2 | 29% |
| Hospital | 1 | 14% |

9 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Series A | 2 | 29% |
| Series B | 2 | 29% |
| Seed | 1 | 14% |
| Pre-Seed | 1 | 14% |
| Funding Round | 1 | 14% |

### Country

| Country | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Italy | 4 | 57% |
| Switzerland | 2 | 29% |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Approxima | Approxima is an early-stage MedTech startup that is creating a percutaneous tricuspid valve replacement method. The company is demonstrating in vivo safety, efficacy, and feasibility through preclinical feasibility phase trials. | $7.7M | Series A | Feb 20, 2025 |  |
| CorFlow Therapeutics | CorFlow Therapeutics is a medtech startup that develops proprietary technologies for diagnosis and treatment of microvascular obstructions in heart attack patients. The CorFlow technologies enable interventional cardiologists to diagnose and treat MVO in severe heart attack patients thereby potentially reducing the short- and long-term complicationrates in these patients. | $48.5M | Series B | Sep 10, 2024 |  |
| EBAMed | EBAMed SA is a Swiss startup based in Geneva whose mission is to enable safe and effective non-invasive treatments of heart arrhythmias with protontherapy. The company is currently developing a medical device to enable non-invasive heart motion imaging and real-time synchronization of the therapeutic beam. This device consists in both hardware andsoftware components and expands treatment possibilities for existing protontherapy centres, enabling them for the first time to treat heart patients. | $15.7M | Series A | Jun 27, 2023 |  |
| Approxima | Approxima is an early-stage MedTech startup that is creating a percutaneous tricuspid valve replacement method. The company is demonstrating in vivo safety, efficacy, and feasibility through preclinical feasibility phase trials. | $1.7M | Seed | Feb 06, 2023 |  |
| InnovHeart | InnovHeart s.r.l develops Transcatheter Mitral Valve Replacement systems (TMVR) to treat patients suffering from mitral valve disease. The company is conducting clinical trials of its novel Saturn TMVR system. | $23.6M | Series B | Aug 07, 2020 |  |
| Bio4Dreams | Bio4Dreams is an entirely privately certified incubator born in 2017 fully dedicated to very early stage innovative startups in Life Sciences, who helps exceptional people to exploit the results of their scientific research, working alongside all the subjects of the innovation chain to create sustainable, pragmatic, and long-lasting business pathswith an international scope.Our peculiarity is the ability to think out of the box. We aim to create a broad international innovation ecosystem in Life Sciences, with Bio4Dreams standing as a reference point and beacon for entrepreneurial ideas.We go well beyond the traditional definition of startup incubator because we follow the entire development path of a single project, starting from its very early stages.Furthermore, we do not limit ourselves to an ordinary interaction with the main innovation players, but we work to integrate them into a wider ecosystem.Key strengths of Bio4Dreams are its fully customized and flexible incubation programs, built through common and validated methodologies, coupled with its international vocation, which gives startups a real chance to immediately start competing on a global scale. | $932K | Pre-Seed | Sep 01, 2017 |  |
| Newronika | Newronika restores brain and body functions with innovative technologies. We translate our deep knowledge on biosignal decoding into clinical practice, with the aim of improving treatments, health, and wellness. With our revolutionary brain devices, the patient receives the right stimulation at the right moment, thus becoming able to perform normaldaily activities and improve quality of life. Newronika is the spin-off company of two leading research institutions in Italy, the Fondazione IRCCS Ca' Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico Hospital and the University of Milan. ​ Newronika comprises a multidisciplinary team formed from Neuroscience research groups and involves scientists with expertise in neurophysiology, neurology, biomedical engineering, neuropsychology, bioinformatics, and biotechnologies. | $1.9M |  | Jun 14, 2016 |  |

7 of 7 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [Club degli Investitori](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/club-degli-investitori) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [415 Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/415-capital-management) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Atlante Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/atlante-ventures) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Broadview Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/broadview-ventures) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [CDP Venture Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/cdp-venture-capital) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [EFI Lake Geneva Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/efi-lake-geneva-ventures) — VC Fund, 1 deal together

## About Claris Ventures

VC Fund · Torino, Italy

Claris Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on early-stage investments in high potential biopharma companies arisen from the Italian R&D ecosystem

3 contacts available at Claris Ventures.

| Name | Title | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Ciro Spedaliere | Partner | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/ciro-spedaliere |
| Barbara Castellano | Investment committee member | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/laura-iris-ferro |
| Lola Buono | Senior Associate | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/lola-buono |

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## FAQ

### What does Barbara Castellano invest in?

Barbara Castellano invests primarily in Health Care, Medical Device and Medical startups, most often at Series A and Series B stage. Most of the 7 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in Italy. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### What is Barbara Castellano's check size?

Barbara Castellano typically joins rounds of $7.7M–$16M at Series A. These ranges are 10th–90th percentile round sizes calculated from confirmed public funding rounds, so they are a realistic guide to the rounds Barbara Castellano participates in.

### When did Barbara Castellano last invest?

The most recent investment recorded for Barbara Castellano closed in Feb 2025. Shizune tracks 7 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.

### Is Shizune's investor data accurate?

Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

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