Eight GO-Bio start-up teams awarded prizes : Date:
The GO-Bio winners for 2018 have been named: Eight start-up teams took home awards from the biotechnology conference in Berlin. They will each receive funding running into millions of euros from the BMBF.
To mark the opening of the German Biotechnology conference on 18 April in Berlin, Georg Schütte, Secretary of State for the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), presented the awards to this year's GO-Bio competition winners. The eighth selection round involved eight start-up teams, whose ideas were subject to a two-tier selection process. Some 68 applicants put their names forward for the coveted start-up funding in the life sciences sector.
The winning projects reflect the key topics characterising the innovative fields of biomedicine and the bio-economy today: from cancer immunotherapy and gene therapy to fight epilepsy through to vaccines to prevent tick-borne diseases. Technology platform developers work on genome editing, single-cell analysis and the ability of nanoparticles to transport active ingredients. Two GO-Bio start-up teams specialise in the use of renewable raw materials in product development: One team has been developing a bio-based alternative to formaldehyde to be employed for the conservation and fixing of biological materials. The other team hopes to generate high-quality protein components from agricultural waste for use in the food industry.
The GO-Bio start-up programme funds researchers for up to seven years – up to four years in the first stage of funding until a company has been established and up to three years in the subsequent stage after start-up. Start-up teams receive substantial financial support from GO-Bio for their sophisticated, high-risk research, averaging about a million euros per year. Additionally, the scientists receive bi-annual business training and extensive coaching and advice in the CPD seminar series "Entrepreneur meetings".
An overview of the GO-Bio round eight winners
Designer recombinases platform for precise genome surgery
Prof. Dr. Frank Buchholz, Technical University Dresden + Eupheria Biotech GmbH
High-quality peptide combinations made from alternative agricultural waste for healthy nutrition
Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Danneel, Ostwestphalia-Lippe University of Applied Sciences
Gene therapy to fight epilepsy
Prof. Dr. Regine Heilbronn, Charité – Berlin University Hospital, Institute of Virology, Benjamin Franklin Campus
Aminolipine for formaldehyde-free fixing of biological materials
Prof. Dr. Bernhard Hirt, Institute for Clinical Anatomy and Cell Analysis, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen
Anti-tick vaccine
Prof. Dr. Michael Hust, Braunschweig University of Technology
T-cell immunotherapy to fight blood cancers
Dr. Felix Lorenz, Max Delbrück Centre for Molecular Medicine, Berlin-Buch
New nano-sized carrier system for chemotherapeutics
Dr. Petar Marinković, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Platform technology for highly parallel single-cell genetic analysis of tumour tissue
Dr. Johannes B. Woehrstein, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich