UCleaner LLC, a company dedicated to transforming personalized oral hygiene routines through innovative bioengineering approaches, has joined the Mtech Ventures incubator.
“UCleaner is a terrific company to have in our portfolio,” said Rob Cohen, program manager of Mtech Ventures. “They have a hard-working, resourceful, and ambitious team, as well as a strategic technology pipeline that could benefit many people. We are excited to support the company throughout its startup journey.”
UCleaner is developing an oral hygiene biomedical device that acts as a comprehensive “car wash” for the mouth. Initially conceptualized as a solution for dental implant patients, the device features water jets that shoot through internal channels to target multiple areas of the mouth at once, cleaning it better than traditional brushing.
UCleaner was founded in 2022 by Robert Choe, Ph.D. ’23, bioengineering, Blake Kuzemchak, ’23, bioengineering, and Erfan Jabari, ’22, bioengineering. Alejandro Venable-Croft, ‘23, bioengineering, joined the venture in 2023 to round out the R&D team. Sam Choe joined as the company’s CEO in 2024.
“There’s that famous ‘crossing the chasm’ concept, where a startup is in the ‘valley of death’ of funding,” Robert Choe explained. “Mtech Ventures serves as a safety net for a company like ours to figure it out and move forward, hone in on our technology so we are revenue-generating, and really start to accelerate. It’s instrumental to this venture’s survival.”
UCleaner has raised $65,000 in total funding, including support from NSF I-Corps Teams, the Dingman-Lamone Center for Entrepreneurship, and the Dr. Edward B. Shils Entrepreneurial Fund, also known as The Shils Fund.
The company has participated in both regional and national I-Corps cohorts.
UCleaner employs five people and two interns.
While the company develops its “UCleaner Device,” its team is exploring potential manufacturing partnerships to sell just the device’s headpiece separately as an implant cleaning kit.
“The market is substantial,” said Sam Choe. “Approximately 15 million people in the U.S. get some sort of dental implants or prostheses in their mouths every year.”
The UCleaner team plans to enter a second regional I-Corps cohort, as well as I-Corps Next, to engage in customer discovery for its implant cleaning kit.
