In September 2020 the DEOXY team won third place in Germany’s largest business plan competition. The independent start-up support initiative Science4Life e.V. holds the business plan competition once a year for the sectors Life Sciences, Chemicals and Energy. The competition is in three phases. The Ideas Phase involves the description of the business idea, the Concept Phase is where the business model is presented, and then in the third phase it is the turn of the full business plan itself. The start-up support initiative supports all entrants individually in the preparation and optimisation of their business plans during the competition.

The research team headed by Johannes Woehrstein and Heinrich Grabmayr of the GO-Bio team DEOXY Technologies is developing a platform technology with which the activity of genes in individual cells can be measured quickly and reliably in a high throughput process. For this they are using fluorescent nanoparticles they have specially developed themselves, with which they can make the number of messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules of a known gene visible and count them. The direct detection of known genes makes the DEOXY system precise and highly sensitive, which in turn makes it interesting for clinical practice.

With their new technology, the Munich-based team can, among other things, classify tumour cells by various different types and identify the most aggressive ones in each case. This enables doctors to choose a personalised tumour therapy for each patient. The measuring system is set to be fully operational for use by clinical co-operation partners by the end of the first GO-Bio funding phase in 2021 and it is intended that its development to market-readiness should be continued in a newly-formed company.