Respiratory device developer Samay and Chiesi Farmaceutici are partnering on new algorithms for the detection of a condition related to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the two companies will announce today.
Led by founder and CEO Dr. Maria Artunduaga, Samay became the first Latin American startup to win the MedTech Innovator accelerator competition a year ago before being featured as the 2025 Success Story at the American Thoracic Society’s Respiratory Innovation Summit. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with operations in Colombia.
Read more: MedTech Innovator just named its 2025 winner
Parma, Italy-based Chiesi is a biopharmaceutical developer focused on respiratory health, rare diseases, and specialty care.
Samay and Chiesi will work together on new algorithms that can detect small airway disease (SAD) and conduct an initial pilot study, with results expected by April 2026.
SAD can manifest two to five years before abnormalities are detectable by standard spirometry. Detecting SAD earlier could allow doctors to intervene and prevent irreversible COPD progression.
Samay’s device is the wearable Sylvee chest sensor, which uses AI-powered analytics and acoustic resonance to detect and measure air trapped in the lungs to help monitor COPD patients.
“Air trapping is a proxy for a small airway disease,” Artunduaga said in an interview with MassDevice before the announcement. “… We already have data from our own patients, and [Chiesi is] paying us to do models, analyze parameters that we haven’t analyzed before to try to tackle small airway disease, which wasn’t in our pipeline.”
If the results of the pilot are positive, the partnership is designed to “broaden the diagnostic landscape for COPD and other respiratory diseases,” the companies said in a joint statement.
“At Chiesi, our mission is to improve the quality of life for patients living with respiratory conditions,” Chiesi Group Air Franchise EVP Michelle Soriano said. “Leveraging Samay’s innovative wearable technology, we aim to address one pressing challenge in respiratory medicine: the early detection of small airway disease.”
Chiesi is not making an investment in Samay or taking equity through the deal, Artunduaga said.
With revenue coming in before regulatory approval of its technology, Samay is operating like a R&D arm for strategics on acoustic resonance technology, she said, and has “a few other deals in the pipeline as well with strategics.”
Samay is planning on regulatory approval and commercialization in Latin America before the U.S., with a Colombian product launch sometime in 2028 ahead of FDA clearance that same year.
Read more: Why Samay plans to launch its COPD tech in Latin America before the U.S.
