Munich Startup: What does your startup do? What problem do you solve?
Daniel Gruber and Anna Jötten, Phio Scientific: Phio Scientific makes cell research faster, more precise, and more efficient. We develop AI-supported analysis systems for in vitro experiments in the life sciences industry. Our users, mostly scientists in cancer research and drug development, can use our system directly in the cell incubator to continuously observe and analyze experiments. specially trained AI segments and quantifies every cell image in real time. This replaces the manual, selective, and often laborious collection of snapshots with a 24/7 digital data stream that massively increases reproducibility, throughput, and data quality in cell research and early drug development.
Munich Startup: But that's been around for a long time!
Daniel Gruber and Anna Jötten: While systems with traditional lens optics, additional hardware, and endpoint measurements exist, they do not offer our patented lensless imaging technology, which enables continuous, non-invasive measurement and is the basis of our AI analysis. Our approach differs in three points:
- Lens-Free Imaging offers up to 100 times larger field of view without loss of focus
- Our AI analyzes in real time and delivers immediately actionable data
- The compact device fits into any CO₂ incubator without any modifications or installation effort
The result: more data, less space, and no handling artifacts. Our technology also offers great potential for 3D cell structures, such as organoids, and contributes to reducing animal testing.
Phio Scientific: Solution for all cell research
Munich Startup: What is your founding story?
Daniel Gruber and Anna Jötten: Our CEO, Philipp Paulitschke, initially developed the first prototypes in his research group at the Physics Faculty of LMU Munich for monitoring their own cell experiments. With the vision of making this solution accessible to the entire research community, he successfully applied for EXIST funding for the start-up phase and recruited collaborators from various disciplines to scale the technology for better, faster, and more reproducible cancer and drug research.
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Daniel Gruber and Anna Jötten: The outbreak of Covid-19 in 2020, the year we were founded, hampered the delivery of many customer inquiries and limited the launch of Cellwatcher due to limited marketing options. We responded flexibly, shifted sales to digital channels, and successfully conducted customer acquisition and product demos via Zoom.
Munich Startup: Where would you like to be in one year, where in five years?
Daniel Gruber and Anna Jötten: New product variants are already on the verge of launch for next year. Following this trend, we plan to scale internationally within the next five years and simultaneously expand our platform with additional hardware modules and AI applications to tap into additional market segments and application areas.
Strong Munich biotech scene
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
Daniel Gruber and Anna Jötten: The biotech scene is excellently networked, and public funding and LMU offer excellent support. We benefit from mentors who have themselves built successful biotech startups, some of whom are also from the LMU physics faculty.
Munich Startup: Hidden champion or shooting star?
Daniel Gruber and Anna Jötten: In the long term, we aim to improve research quality worldwide by setting new standards in reproducibility. Journals and editors are constantly demanding more robust, reliable data on a large scale. Our publications, for example, demonstrate that omics analyses are massively improved by controlling growth parameters. This is precisely where our technology can revolutionize cell research in the long term and make us a rising star.
