Healthcare industry

Company profile - 04/09/2017

Mireca: a new drug for stopping the progression of eye diseases

A team of researchers from several EU countries has developed a new drug that stops the progression of hereditary retinal diseases. The project partners founded a company called Mireca Medicines GmbH in the city of Tübingen to bring the drug to market.

Article - 17/02/2009

Tissue engineering companies and EU obstacles

With the new regulation on advanced therapy medicinal products the European Union has tried to establish legal certainty with regard to gene therapy somatic cell therapy and tissue engineering products. However Dr. Heinz W. Joseph of TETEC AG is sure that the new guidelines will lead to problems for small and medium-sized companies.

Article - 07/03/2017

KiTZ: Hopp Children’s Tumour Center at NCT Heidelberg

The Heidelberg University Hospital and the DKFZ have established the "Hopp Children's Tumor Center at NCT Heidelberg" (KiTZ) where doctors, scientists, nursing staff and other specialists work side by side on new diagnostic and therapeutic options to help children with cancer.

Press release - 28/05/2009

CureVac Begins Clinical Study with mRNA Vaccine

CureVac GmbH announced that the Paul-Ehrlich-Institute, the German regulatory authority for medicinal products, has approved the Clinical Trial Application (CTA) to begin a Phase I clinical study with RNActive® derived mRNA vaccine CV9201. The vaccine will be tested in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer who have been pre-treated with different therapies.

Article - 30/08/2010

Bodensee Brustzentrum offers effective breast cancer prevention services

The two Brustzentrum Bodensee (Lake Constance Breast Centre) sites at the Hospital in Constance and the Women’s Hospital in Friedrichshafen have a principal goal: to enable the best possible early detection of all types of breast cancer, to reduce the morbidity and mortality of breast cancer patients and to increase survival rates by offering ultra-modern breast cancer prevention measures.

Under the agreement Nycomed will receive the exclusive worldwide rights to develop manufacture and commercialise the subcutaneous formulation of veltuzumab for the treatment of all non-cancer indications.

Expert interview - 14/11/2016

The great untapped potential of herbal medicines

Baden-Württemberg is home to a large number of companies that produce herbal medicines, i.e. preparations made from plant extracts rather than pure compounds. In an interview with Dr. Ariane Pott from BIOPRO Baden-Württemberg, Professor Dr. Michael Wink, Director of the Institute of Pharmacy and Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Heidelberg, explains how these special extracts are placed on the market and how they differ from medicines…

Article - 22/11/2010

LEUKONET provides evidence for new therapies for CNS diseases

The concept of evidence-based medicine stipulates that the efficacy of any therapy must be shown in large clinical studies before being used for treating patients. However this is a requirement that cannot be realistically fulfilled for rare diseases due to the small number of people affected. To redress this situation in the case of leukodystrophies rare metabolic disorders of the nervous system that affect only a small number of people in…

CureVac GmbH has entered into a partnership with the Department of Urology University of Florida Gainesville U.S. to jointly advance its lead candidate CV9103 into the clinical development. The alliance covers preclinical studies and a US phase III trial.

Protein kinases are a major focus of modern cancer research. Since it has become known that these enzymes play a role in the development of tumours, researchers around the world are concentrating on finding drugs to inhibit overactive protein kinases and prevent cancer cells from growing. One of these active substances is currently being tested at the Tumour Biology Centre in Freiburg as part of a worldwide phase III clinical trial.

Article - 09/01/2012

Biomarkers to combat lung cancer

A biomarker-driven personalised therapeutic approach to lung cancer is possible – this is the conclusion reached by the BATTLE trial. The preliminary results of the trial were summarised by scientists from the Thoraxklinik at Heidelberg University Hospital in the May 2011 issue of “Clinical Investigation”.

Article - 22/10/2012

syneed imaging: precise visualisation of functional tissue properties

Functional medical imaging modalities are of great significance in modern medical diagnostics. Existing ways of diagnosing diseases are now being expanded with the arrival of the innovative parameter imaging method. syneed imaging uses proprietary highly sensitive software for the analysis of dynamic image data. This software complements standard methods such as computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging and increases the significance of…

CureVac AG, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing a new class of transformative medicines based on optimized mRNA, today announced that the German Health Authority Paul-Ehrlich-Institute (PEI) and the Belgian Federal Agency for Medicines and Health Products (FAMHP) have approved the Phase 1 clinical trial for its vaccine program to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection. The trial will be conducted in Germany and Belgium.

Press release - 21/10/2009

Meyenburg Award 2009 for the First Targeted Anti-Cancer Drug

The 2009 Meyenburg Award for Cancer Research with an award sum of 50,000 euros goes to American blood cancer expert, Brian Druker. The Meyenburg Foundation honors Druker as a pioneer of molecularly targeted cancer therapies for developing the leukemia drug Imatinib (Gleevec). Druker’s work has turned chronic myeloid leukemia from a deathly threat into a treatable disease for many patients today. The Meyenburg-Award has been presented on…

Vaccine development - 02/06/2020

CureVac as a pioneer of mRNA technology – what is behind the novel COVID-19 vaccine?

All eyes are on vaccines against the coronavirus. The Tübingen-based company CureVac is doing pioneering work in this field, and intends to initiate clinical testing of its lead vaccine candidate in June. At the same time, Curevac is manufacturing the material for this vaccine candidate. But that’s not all: the novel mRNA technology also has the potential to revolutionise the treatment of cancer and metabolic diseases. What makes the method so…

Article - 24/05/2017

Ralf Reski: from moss to humans

Prof. Dr. Ralf Reski conducts basic research at the University of Freiburg. But this is not all the well-known plant biotechnologist does. He also wants his ideas to become concrete products. This is why he established Greenovation Biotech GmbH, a company which produces novel drugs in mosses. The company’s first moss-produced drug candidate – Moss-aGal – a recombinant form of human α-galactosidase, is now being tested in a phase I clinical trial.…

Article - 21/03/2011

Immunotherapy: the rocky road to clinical application

Hans-Georg Rammensee has one major goal: he wants to contribute to the successful application of immunotherapy in clinical settings and is convinced that this will only be possible once individualised immunotherapies are used. Individualised immunotherapy refers to the induction of a specific immune response against specific tumour-associated antigens. Rammensee has made major progress in this area and is now focused on overcoming the obstacles…

Article - 16/01/2012

Manfred Jung: drug discovery and the epigenetic code

Prof. Dr. Manfred Jungs team at the University of Freiburg are chemical epigeneticists whose research involves the development of methods that enable them to identify and optimise new therapeutic drugs which are able to alter the epigenetic code of cancer and other cell types. The team use a perfidious worm for their research.

After a successful start of the 2009 business year, Boehringer Ingelheim is expecting their sales growth to outpace the world pharmaceutical market; for the tenth time in succession. As announced by this second-largest German pharmaceuticals producer, the company posted growth in local currency (+ 8.3 per cent) over the previous year in the first six months of 2009. Net sales amounted to 6,388 million euro.

Press release - 10/01/2012

Apogenix receives additional 2.3 million Euros BMBF grant as partner of the biotech cluster Rhine-Neckar

The biopharmaceutical company Apogenix GmbH today announced that it has received an additional € 2.3 million BMBF grant (German Federal Ministry of Education and Research) for the further advancement of its lead substance APG101. Apogenix will use the proceeds to develop APG101 for the treatment of myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). More specifically, the grant will be used for the production of clinical material and for the development of a…

Article - 24/07/2017

Cancer medicine development as a science and industry partnership

The German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and Bayer AG are collaborating on a strategic partnership focusing on the development of innovative cancer therapies. The two partners have developed an active substance which selectively blocks a mutation of a metabolic enzyme that occurs in certain types of cancer. The substance has been successfully tested in preclinical studies and is now also being tested in a clinical trial on patients with brain…

Press release - 24/01/2011

Synimmune - Close cooperation cuts new cancer drug development time

A development project from Synimmune GmbH, founded in July 2010, made a big impression on the panel of assessors at the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). So much so, that the company was awarded EUR 2.5 million as part of the GO-Bio biotechnology start-up scheme.

Article - 18/10/2010

Maurits Ortmanns: visual prosthesis research benefits from microelectronics research in Ulm

“Around one third of all visual prosthesis research in Germany is done by the Institute of Microelectronics at Ulm University,” said Maurits Ortmanns, a young electrical engineer who has been head of the Institute of Microelectronics since 2008. He is responsible for half of this figure and his colleague Albrecht Rothermel for the other half. The two engineers work for two German manufacturers who are developing competing versions of retinal…

Article - 18/05/2015

Parvoviruses can destroy brain tumours

Parvoviruses such as H-1PV have been shown to selectively attack and destroy human cancer cells. However, they are unable to replicate in healthy human cells. A preliminary clinical trial is currently being carried out to assess the suitability of parvoviruses for treating malignant brain cancer. Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) have now discovered the cause of the selective effect of H-1PV. The finding helps identify…

Article - 30/09/2013

CureVac GmbH: RNA-based vaccines and immunotherapies

CureVac GmbH, a biopharmaceutical company based in Tübingen, develops immunotherapies for cancer along with prophylactic vaccines based on its proprietary messenger RNA (mRNA) technology platform. CureVac also uses RNA for developing adjuvants. Two clinical trials, a Phase I trial in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and a Phase IIb trial in prostate cancer, are currently underway to test the efficiency of mRNA-based drugs in treating cancer and…