The Bavarian State Ministry for Economic Affairs, Regional Development and Energy today announced the five winners of this year's m4 Award pre-startup competition at the BioEntrepreneurship Summit 2019. Oncology and antibiotic resistance are the winning topics of this year's competition. Each winning team will receive up to €500,000 for two years.
Of the selected research groups, three are developing novel therapies for different forms of cancer to achieve targeted, effective, and well-tolerated treatment. Two of the research groups address the urgent medical need in the area of antibiotic resistance with their projects. All winning teams conduct research in Munich, four at the Technical University of Munich, and one group at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. The more than 30 applications for the m4 Award were received from research institutions throughout Bavaria.
Financial support and active support from BioM
With prize money of up to €500,000 over two years, the competition supports the further development and validation of the respective project idea in preparation for a spin-off. The scientists receive not only financial support but also active support from BioM and other partners as well as industry experts.
State Secretary Roland Weigert emphasized in his video message:
"Biotechnology is a key technology of the 21st century and enables the development of innovative therapies. This 'medicine of the future' is increasingly emerging not only in large industrial companies, but primarily in life science startups. Therefore, the Bavarian State Government supports the establishment and growth of biotechnology startups with a targeted range of instruments."
Weigert hopes that the award-winning projects, with the support of the Bavarian State Government, will lead to the creation of further highly innovative biotech companies in Bavaria.
“Award-winning projects have great potential”
Horst Domdey, Managing Director of BioM, is convinced of the continued success of the selected teams:
"The topics of the award-winning projects have great potential to generate innovative therapies. Bavaria thus once again demonstrates its role as a driving force for the medicine of the future."
With the 2011 BioMWith the m4 Award, initiated by the network organization of the biotechnology industry in Munich and Bavaria, the Free State of Bavaria supports innovative products, technologies, or services from young companies that are significantly driving the development of future medicine. The award is presented every two years.
The winners:
Commercialization of oncolytic viruses (FUSIX Biotech): Oncolytic viruses (OVs) are now claiming a steadily growing market share in the field of cancer therapeutics. These viruses offer an elegant and multimodal mechanism of action that enables long-lasting systemic therapeutic success. Despite significant progress, oncolytic viruses still face several obstacles in aggressive solid tumors and due to a lack of tumor penetration when administered intravenously. FUSIX Biotech addresses these and other problems with a novel proprietary hybrid virus technology. Based on cell-cell fusion reactions, both the infection of healthy cells and the release of new virus particles from infected cells into the surrounding tissue are reduced, resulting in a unique safety profile. With this funding, the team aims to enable the preclinical development of its lead product.
Development of a nanoswitch for antibodies (LOGIBODY): Antibody-based immunotherapies have great potential for treating tumors. However, overstimulation of the immune system can lead to side effects that require discontinuation of therapy. To overcome these problems, the team and their mentor, Prof. Dietz, have developed an "on/off switch" for antibody immunotherapies. This is an ultra-miniaturized nanoswitch produced from DNA. The nanoswitch can specifically recognize tumor cells and recruit the body's own immune cells to fight them.
Development of a T cell therapy platform to protect chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells and other cell therapeutic procedures from suppression and to use regulatory mechanisms for function enhancement (CARMOUFLAGE): The use of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells has been established in the treatment of some leukemias and lymphomas. However, CAR T cells have not yet been effective in solid tumors due to tumor-associated immunosuppression and insufficient access of T cells to tumor cells. The research team led by Sebastian Kobold therefore developed the CARMOUFLAGE platform to enable CAR T cells to access tumor tissue.
Development of novel antibiotics for the treatment of infections with multi-resistant Gram-negative bacteria (FRAgment based antiBIOTICS – FRABIOTICS): Infections with multidrug-resistant bacterial pathogens represent one of the greatest medical challenges in the future. Using a proprietary screening platform, the research team was able to identify two novel fragment classes as inhibitors of bacterial resistance to the most important class of antibiotics, the β-lactams.
Preclinical development of a resistance-free antibiotic for the treatment of deadly infectious diseases (aBACTER): Bacterial infectious diseases caused by multidrug-resistant germs such as multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) pose one of the greatest threats to our health. Stephan Sieber's project team has discovered a new antibiotic that is highly effective against Gram-positive, multidrug-resistant bacterial strains and exhibits no resistance development. The new mechanism of action is fundamentally different from that of all previously approved antibiotics.
