Overcoming hurdles and putting research results into practice with the help of Innovectis and Unibator
Scientists from Goethe University Frankfurt’s Faculty of Medicine are launching their own companies – and transforming academic knowledge into added value for society.
Prosperity is founded on the practical application of knowledge. When new findings reach the people who need them and improve their lives, they generate benefits. In medicine, the benefit to humankind is immediately apparent when, for example, a drug is developed that combats a disease. To find broad application, innovations must be transformed into products and launched on the market: a task that is usually undertaken by a private company.
The flow of knowledge from basic research via applied research to the finished industrial product is – broadly outlined – the “engine of our prosperity”. We must constantly fill this engine up with fuel in the shape of new ideas, which are then transformed into marketable products. Many people, institutions, and financial backers are involved in this process: a common and important task that calls for courage, foresight, optimism, and perseverance. Particularly in medicine, perhaps more than anywhere else, there is also the will to champion others.
Start-ups and spin-offs
Several professors from Goethe University Frankfurt’s Faculty of Medicine have embarked on this adventure: Peter Bader, Manuel Kaulich, Eike Nagel, and Andreas Schnitzbauer. As researchers and/or physicians at University Hospital Frankfurt, they work closely with patients and can see exactly what they need. For them, this alone is motivation enough to put their research results into practice. The vehicles for this are spin-offs, start-ups, and out-licensing.
Spin-offs always have a university partner. They are based on the university’s research results. The term “start-ups” covers a broader spectrum. These are young companies whose business ideas promise rapid growth. They are not necessarily based on a specific technology developed at the university. A spin-off is a special type of start-up.
So that researchers’ ideas are transformed into marketable products for the benefit of individuals and society as a whole, Goethe University Frankfurt supports the process from start to finish – from the disclosure and patenting of the invention to the licensing of the research results. On the one hand, its subsidiary, Innovectis, is there to take care of the entire process. If the scientists themselves want to set up a start-up or spin-off based on their new findings or their new technology, Goethe Unibator, the university’s entrepreneurship center, supports the start-up teams with special coaching programs and access to a broad network of mentors.
A marathon with hurdles
Dr. Kirstin Schilling, Managing Director of Innovectis, is familiar with the transfer process: “We have some very good examples of therapeutic developments that have already saved hundreds of lives, as well as highly innovative technologies that are either licensed out directly to existing companies or developed and commercialized via spin-offs.” These include, for example, Bader’s innovation and the respective spin-offs set up by Schnitzbauer, Nagel, and Kaulich together with Kerstin Koch, a science manager at Goethe University Frankfurt, and Ivan Đikić, director of the Institute of Biochemistry II.
Innovectis has helped these scientists, among others, put their scientific findings into practice. As Professor Manuel Kaulich explains to “Forschung Frankfurt”, there were certain difficulties that had to be overcome: “Setting up a company is not a sprint. It’s a marathon with hurdles.” It all began a few years ago, he reports, with discussions between him and Andreas Ernst, who was also a group leader at the Institute of Biochemistry II at the time and is now the CEO/CSO and co-founder of Phialogics. Both had thought about how they could use gene scissors to push technological boundaries in screening.
With the invention of 3Cs technology in 2016, Kaulich and his team succeeded in “pushing these boundaries”. 3Cs technology is a production process that makes it possible to identify previously unknown gene functions and interactions more quickly and accelerates the search for new drugs. “3Cs technology paves the way to using CRISPR/Cas screening [editor’s note: screening with the aforementioned gene scissors] to examine the human genome in a new dimension in terms of the variety of experiments and the manageability of their complexity,” says Kaulich, outlining the advantages.
First spin-off with Goethe University Frankfurt as a shareholder
First, the inventors registered their discovery with Innovectis, the technology transfer agency at Goethe University Frankfurt responsible for this task. Together with Innovectis, they also resolved to patent their invention. As an alternative to out-licensing, where the owner of the property rights outsources the manufacture and sale of the protected product by granting a license to another company, Innovectis suggested that the scientists set up their own company, which was subsequently launched in December 2018 under the name Vivlion. Kaulich and Đikić then asked Koch to join them as the third member of the executive board. Her job is to take care of the spin-off’s day-to-day operations and business development. Kaulich and Dr. Sönke Bästlein have been the company’s CEOs since 2022.
As Kaulich goes on to explain, Vivlion is the first spin-off to have the university as a shareholder. Because it was the first, there was no blueprint to follow, and the parties involved had to mastermind and agree on a large number of contracts. Alongside the usual challenges confronting a new company, they had to overcome the hurdles a biotech start-up typically faces. As such, the commercialization of the 3Cs technology necessitated licensing agreements with other CRISP/Cas patent holders, in addition to the rights of use in relation to the know-how generated at the university. “At the time, the situation was unclear. The biggest patent dispute in the history of biotechnology was raging,” recalls Kaulich. They were obliged to safeguard their invention in various directions before the licenses could finally be granted in March 2020.
Vivlion managed to raise the seed capital comparatively quickly. At this early stage, gsccb Beteiligungsverwaltung, a private investment management firm in Frankfurt, came on board as an investor. The money enabled the company to pay for laboratory time and participation in international conferences, for example, not to mention staff. Because CRISPR/Cas screening as a basic technology is not yet widespread on a broad industrial front, it will take several years, says Kaulich, before industry has sufficient numbers of highly specialized young professionals at its disposal.
Growth financing was the biggest weak point
The fact that the laboratories were closed during the pandemic made the company’s development additionally difficult. At the turn of 2022/2023, however, Vivlion finally entered the market and began offering innovative gene editing reagents and screening services for the global market. The aim is to establish Vivlion as a partner for leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies and to promote the use of its technology platform in both the academic and industrial world. The company is also planning to build up its own laboratory capacities, says Kaulich.
He highlights how important the support provided by Innovectis, the university’s management, and the Institute of Biochemistry II has been for the spin-off’s development so far. The next round of financing is crucial, he says, for the company’s further success. Everyone at Vivlion is hoping for further help from local sources in Frankfurt and attractive conditions overall. In fact, financing the growth phase of a young company in Germany, in comparison to Sweden or the USA, for example, is the biggest weak point in the long process of turning academic knowledge into added value for society.
Many economists say this is due to a lack of courage, entrepreneurial mindset, shareholder culture, and optimism – in a nutshell: not enough people who invest money and commitment in new ideas. Perhaps there is also a lack of start-up entrepreneurs who communicate their enthusiasm and their story to the outside world via the media and in this way draw attention to themselves, their inventions, and their companies. Numerous studies, such as one recently published by McKinsey, confirm this general problem. Co-author Harald Bauer writes: “In basic research, Germany is the world leader in many emerging technologies. It is in commercialization and scaling that German companies still too often fail.”
Another Frankfurt spin-off has also reached a critical point: Goethe CVI. Professor Eike Nagel and Dr. Valentina Puntmann set up the company, which has received several awards and funding from the Federal Government and the State of Hesse, in May 2022. According to the company’s website, the spin-off offers “a disruptive, fully integrated, AI-based solution for cardiac magnetic resonance imaging”. Goethe CVI aims to speed up the transfer of scientific results into practice, says Nagel. In this way, a large number of cardiac catheter examinations could be avoided and many patients would receive treatment sooner.
Despite many scientific recommendations, cardiac MRI is still used very rarely and very late in the course of the disease. Although the guidelines recommend using it at an early stage, health insurers in Germany are loath to pay for it. “That’s why we decided to simplify and automate cardiac MRI as far as possible, which makes it cheaper and usable on a wider scale,” explains Nagel. The corresponding patents have been filed, and initial funding is already in the bank. The software has been programmed and validated. Here, too, Innovectis has been a constant source of assistance. In the coming months, the two researchers and entrepreneurs want to apply for certification in accordance with the Medical Device Regulation and launch their product on the market this year. By then, at the latest, Goethe CVI will need fresh capital to finance the next steps.
Capreolos, another spin-off from Goethe University Frankfurt, received a cash injection – seed finance – in the early phase of its establishment at the end of 2023. As with Goethe CVI, the funding came from the State of Hesse and other investors. Three physicians at University Hospital Frankfurt set up the company in August 2021: Professor Andreas Schnitzbauer, Charlotte Detemble, and Dr. Dora Žmuc. Mark Siller later joined the team as an expert in app development.
According to a press release issued when the seed finance was granted, Capreolos offers a smartphone app “as a digital medical device designed to help patients prepare safely at home before major surgical procedures.” This is done via a program customized to the individual patient to build up their strength and stamina as well as improve their mobility. The attending physician collects risk data, from which suitable “prehabilitation” is calculated automatically and transmitted to the patient’s cell phone. With the help of a smartwatch, users train at home for a few weeks and receive dietary recommendations as well as psychological support. Feedback from the doctor ensures that patients follow the treatment concept.
Professor Peter Bader and his team at University Hospital Frankfurt provide an example of how academic knowledge progresses to a medical product. He explains to “Forschung Frankfurt” that not all approval studies have yet been completed for the drug to be used on a broad scale. But it has already been possible to help several patients. As a pediatrician, he sees firsthand the distress of his young patients with blood cancer or other life-threatening diseases who require a stem cell transplant if they are to be cured. Despite all scientific advances, this therapeutic procedure still bears the risk of severe side effects. One of the problems is graft-versus-host disease (GvHD).
Bader learned stem cell therapy from the bottom up. During his community service in the mid-1980s, he worked as a volunteer on a hospital ward for bone marrow transplant patients and was directly confronted with this complication for the first time. This experience ultimately motivated him to study medicine, and the topic has stayed with him ever since. Developing a method to treat this complication successfully and help those affected is his ongoing incentive, he says.
“At some point in the last 20 years, we came up with the idea of mixing mesenchymal stromal cells from a pool of bone marrow cells from different donors and expanding them together. The cells stimulated each other and developed a stronger potency,” says Bader, describing the invention in an article for the House of Pharma & Healthcare at Goethe University Frankfurt. He continues: “Thanks to this method – MSC-FFM preparation – and in collaboration with the blood donor service, we were able to produce stable and uniformly reproducible batches of mesenchymal stromal cell compounds with strong immunomodulatory properties that can be used effectively for therapeutic purposes.”
For laypeople, as Bader admits, this all sounds rather complicated. The new compound was initially developed for treating solely his patients. Based on promising test results, the Paul Ehrlich Institute granted Bader and his team an exemption in accordance with Section 4b of Germany’s Medicinal Products Act. The key question was then: “How can we get this promising compound ready for market so that it can help patients throughout Germany and Europe?”
Bader had already taken the first step in this direction by registering the invention with Innovectis, the subsidiary of Goethe University Frankfurt that then took care of the patenting process. “The development and approval of such products is costly and protracted, which is why you generally need to protect your patent assiduously,” says Dr. Kirstin Schilling, CEO of Innovectis. This is the only way to find a partner from industry who will make the invention market-ready.
Bader admits that “being suddenly confronted with economic issues was a big problem.” “But that’s exactly what Innovectis is there for,” he says, grateful for the support. Drug trials pass through several stages. New active substances, for example, are first tested on cell cultures. Only when they are used for humans are they referred to as clinical trials. This, at the latest, is when private companies are generally required as financial backers and “development workers”. For this purpose, Innovectis, Bader, and his colleagues Zyrafete, Selim Kuci, and Halvard Bönig established contact with a company called Medac, whose headquarters are in Wedel. Medac has been supplying the compound for severely ill patients in Germany under the name Obnitix since September 2019. This was made possible by special authorization from the Paul Ehrlich Institute.
Medac is a pharmaceutical SME that focuses on patients with oncological diseases. It has taken up the gauntlet of getting the product approved within Phase III trials. Even though “the market is small, this work is extremely important for the patients concerned,” Bader explains. He encourages other physicians to do the same and to register their inventions with Innovectis so that partners can be found who will further develop them and make them available for patients.
Overall, then, scientists at Goethe University Frankfurt, with the help of business experts and numerous other stakeholders, are making a significant contribution to transforming groundbreaking research findings into added value for society. This – the practical application of knowledge – is the fountain of our prosperity and well-being.
Contact point for potential start-ups / The Entrepreneurship Center helps students, staff and alumni from all faculties put scientific findings into practice and transform the resulting business ideas into market-ready products and services. The highlight is an 18-month start-up program.
Innovectis is a subsidiary of Goethe University Frankfurt that provides services for researchers. It supports the entire process from the disclosure and patenting of an invention to the licensing of research results to industry. Innovectis also assists with access to finance for development projects and corporate networking.
Our experts / Manuel Kaulich is a co-founder of Vivlion GmbH and Professor of Biochemistry at Goethe University Frankfurt. An expert in gene editing, he heads the Functional Genomics and Genetic Vulnerabilities Group at the Institute of Biochemistry II. His laboratory was responsible for developing the 3Cs technology and is investigating cell cycle regulation in the normal state and in malignant tumors. Kaulich studied biotechnology and molecular biosciences, earned his doctoral degree at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry and the Biozentrum in Basel before joining the University of California San Diego as a postdoctoral researcher.
Our experts / Eike Nagel is a cardiologist, professor and the director of the Institute for Experimental and Translational Cardiovascular Imaging at University Hospital Frankfurt. From 2007 to 2015, he was professor and head of the Department of Cardiovascular Imaging at King’s College London. He has been a professor at Goethe University Frankfurt since 2015. His scientific work focuses especially on cardiac MRI. The research results generated by his team led to the establishment of Goethe CVI.
Our experts / Peter Bader is Professor of Pediatrics at Frankfurt University Hospital. He has headed the Department of Stem Cell Transplantation and Immunology and been Deputy Director of the Department of Pediatrics since October 2004. His research centers on pre-emptive strategies for the prevention of relapse after allogeneic stem cell transplantation in children and adolescents with malignant diseases as well as the development and application of innovative cell therapies. In March 2019, Bader was co-president of the 45th Annual Convention of the European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT).
Our experts / Andreas Schnitzbauerjoined Frankfurt University Hospital as a senior consultant in 2012, where he was appointed as an associate professor for surgery in 2015. He has been the hospital’s deputy director since 2017. As part of his postgraduate studies in safety, quality, informatics and leadership at Harvard Medical School, Boston, he promoted the idea of developing a digital solution to prepare patients before major abdominal and thoracic surgery. A twelve-strong team at Goethe University Frankfurt and Capreolos is now working to put this idea into practice.
The author / Stefan Terliesner, born in 1967, graduated in economics and is a freelance business and financial journalist.
s.terliesner@web.de
