Last Thursday evening, the summer reception – a joint event organised together with the Verein zur Förderung der Biotechnologie und Medizintechnik e. V. and Tübingen-Reut-lingen Technology Park (TTR) GmbH – was finally back, offering a great occasion to ex-perience the huge network of BioRegio STERN Management GmbH, which recently marked its 20th anniversary. The new map of BioRegion STERN that was presented at the reception in Reutlingen also provided an impressive view of the lively life sciences scene. It includes over 400 profiles spread across categories including biotech, medtech, engineering and digital health/IT.

The Science2Start award ceremony formed part of this regional get-together for entre-preneurs, scientists, investors and politicians from the sector. This was the 13th time prizes had been awarded in recognition of promising life sciences ideas developed by scientists and start-ups from the region. The keynote speaker was to have been Prof. Thomas Gottwald, Member of the Supervisory Board and shareholder of Ovesco Endoscopy AG. Unfortunately, he had to cancel at short notice. Luckily, Dr. Christian Lin-demann from Voelker & Partner Rechtsanwälte Wirtschaftsprüfer Steuerberater mbB, a joint practice of lawyers, tax advisors and financial auditors that donated the prize money worth a total of 5,500 euros, was able to step in. “Curiosity is something we all have in common. These young entrepreneurs are here because at some point they were curious about something, and they still are,” Lindemann said of the prize win-ners. “As for me, I have the privilege of being able to share in that curiosity and dis-cover now what the issues of the near and medium-term future will be. Day by day, that curiosity drives you to make progress in the field of human health. Is there any-thing better than that?”

After the keynote speech, the following four teams from BioRegion STERN received their awards.

2nd place: “Molecular imaging as companion diagnostics – nanobody-based precision radiotracer for ImmunoPET”
The team led by Teresa Wagner, Dr. Philipp Kaiser and Dr. Björn Tränkle from the Natural and Medical Science Institute (NMI) in Reutlingen is developing special nano-bodies, also known as nanoantibodies, that target immune cell markers. These inno-vative detecting molecules can be used as tracers for positron emission tomography
(PET), an imaging procedure that involves patients being injected with a mildly radio-active substance (tracer). Nanobody-based tracers are capable of identifying immune cells in tumour tissue. This new procedure for tumour diagnostics makes it possible to customise cancer immunotherapy to the individual patient and thus boost the effec-tiveness of the treatment, while also reducing costs and side effects.

3rd place: “TuCAN – Tübingen Cognitive Assessment for Neuropsychiatric Dis-orders”
TuCAN is being developed by a team led by Christian Mychajliw from the University Hospital for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Tübingen (Louisa Sting BSc., Kristina Dawidowsky MSc., Dr. Heiko Holz and Dr. Franz Wortha). The app enables a tablet to be used for a user-oriented, needs-based diagnostic procedure for neuropsychiatric conditions such as dementia, Parkinson’s and depression. The application contains established tasks for the patients and supplements the responses with additional rec-orded digital information, which is then to be analysed automatically and objectively using machine learning. As a result, TuCAN can help medical personnel, including specialists, with early differential diagnoses and provide a more efficient, more effec-tive way of conducting and evaluating the neuropsychological diagnostic tests.