As Regenbrecht explained to us, “There are many SMEs on the Berlin-Buch campus - which can also be customers - and it has a relatively central location so you can fly in and out for face-to-face meetings.” This biotech cluster is tremendously valuable to young companies. “So we saw an opportunity to start a company.” That company is now CPO, headquartered in the biotech park at Berlin-Buch. “The combination of really covers all of preclinical testing,” Regenbrecht explained. Regenbrecht had been working on in vitro models from patient-derived cancer tissues, while his colleagues and cpo co-founders Jens Hoffmann and Reinhold Schäfer were investigating aberrant singling pathways in cancer and working on PDX mouse models respectively. “I was working on Oncotrack, an initiative backed by the big pharmas like Eli Lilly, Bayer and Pfizer to explore the next generation of oncology biomarkers, with a team at Charité when I was inspired to start my company,” he recalls. One contestant of the first Speed Lecture Award in 2008, Christian Regenbrecht, was a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genomics, and he ultimately turned it into his startup, Cellular Phenomics & Oncology (CPO). And by the way, the speed lecture is also fun!”
“With the creation of the speed lecture award, vfa bio wants to stimulate young scientists to transport their ideas accordingly. “Appealing as well as comprehensive communication is a prerequisite for future success especially with regards to possible cooperation partners and investors,” Dr. With 30 member companies, vfa bio aims to promote the therapeutic and economic potential of biotechnology to make Germany the leading biotech location in Europe. The Award was launched in co-operation with vfa bio, which represents the biotech interests within the German Association of Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies representing worldwide leading pharma companies in the fields of health, research and economy. In the competition, scientists present their ideas in three minutes of “real talk” - no academic jargon allowed! This year, finalists will receive coaching from The Pitch Doctor, Christoph Sollich, who has advised dozens of accelerators, incubators and startup competitions, before speaking to a crowd that has grown to 800 scientists and entrepreneurs this year. Since it began 15 years ago, it now features an engaging Speed Lecture Award. To foster connections and showcase this thriving community, HealthCapital organizes an annual conference, Bionnale.
Twenty years later, Berlin’s ‘techosystem’ has blossomed, with more than 500 new companies founded every year and over 500 in biotech, pharma and medtech already up and running. Originally called “BioTop Berlin-Brandenburg,” the cluster HealthCapital was founded in 1996 to connect innovation in scientific research and emerging life sciences industry. So with all of this fabulous therapeutic research happening, how can it be developed from the lab bench to the bedside? In fact, our editor, Evelyn, was inspired by Berlin’s top-notch research to move here from New York City for a PhD in chemistry and chemical biology at the Freie Universität! Two German institutions dominating the Nature Index as some of the most prolific publishers in the magazine count with institutes in Berlin: the Max Planck Society, number four on the list, claims Institutes of Infection Biology and Molecular Genomics, and the Helmholtz Association, number eight, has the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine. The research clout of Berlin described through quantity is impressive on its own, and the city has the quality to match. Berlin boasts 35 large research institutions focused on life sciences, and around 130 hospitals - including Europe’s largest and most renowned university hospital, Charité. So much research, so many opportunities for academics and entrepreneurs. Here’s how the city bridges the gap between science and business! With Berlin’s plethora of life science research and academia, opportunities abound for biotech entrepreneurs.
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