Germany is famous for being the Land of Poets and Thinkers. From vital inventions to Christmas traditions, sausages and beer, Germany is home to plenty of culture, history and quirky laws! Germany is also known for its major cities, the Black Forest, the Alps and Oktoberfest. (Hey Explorer, 2020).
Germany is also becoming one of the standout countries in biotech. With large players such as Qiagen, Miltenyi Biotec, BioNTech and Evotec serving as anchors, smaller biotech’s are enabled to thrive.
Germany’s biotech clusters create a variety of opportunities to transfer innovation into products, which should be attractive for investors, particularly since the EU is harmonized from a regulatory point of view and is one of the most important markets in the world. (Pinset Masons, 2021).
My picks for Germany are:
ORYX Translational Medicine, Vaterstetten, has developed strategies that bridge the gap between academic research and the pharmaceutical industry for new cancer therapies. Today, the company is developing three clinical cancer immunotherapy projects. They have an oncolytic virus to infect and lyse tumor cells and evoke a strong anti-tumor immune response. In addition, they develop therapeutic vaccines to treat cancers by enhancing a patient’s natural defenses against the tumor.
Altyas Therapeutics, Amtsgericht Jena, is a spin-off of the University of Jena with the aim to develop novel immunological therapy concepts for the worldwide treatment of obesity, a condition with a large unmet clinical need. The company has the relevant expertise and patents on various antigen epitopes with proven relevance to novel therapeutic immunological regulation of excessive amounts of adipocytes.
Medigene AG, Munich, is a publicly listed biotechnology company. With its scientific expertise, Medigene is working on the development of innovative immunotherapies such as T cell receptor-modified T cells (TCR‑Ts) or dendritic cell (DC) vaccines to treat cancer in fields of high medical need. The first product candidates are in clinical development.
Affectis Pharmaceuticals AG, Dortmund, is a pharmaceutical company developing novel drugs for the treatment of neurodegenerative and neuroinflammatory diseases. Their capabilities in drug discovery and medicinal chemistry enabled the company to develop drugs with innovative mechanisms of action based on pioneering findings in the field of P2X7 receptors. They are currently working on two products, one for neuropathic pain for MS and one for depression.
T2cure, Frankfurt, is dedicated to the development of novel regenerative therapeutics based on mononuclear cells obtained from the patient’s bone marrow. These cells have the potential to initiate repair processes in the tissue by improving blood flow and releasing messenger substances that promote cell regeneration. Such repair processes are of particular importance in patients with recent myocardial infarction or chronic cardiac insufficiency as well as in patients with general circulatory disorders, such as the arteries of the legs.
Silence Therapeutics, Berlin, are developing a deep pipeline of innovative siRNAs based on their mRNAi GOLD™ platform for diseases with a genetic basis. The depth and versatility of their liver-targeting technology gives them the opportunity to address a wide range of conditions in virtually any therapeutic area. Their wholly owned pipeline is currently focused in three therapeutic areas of high unmet need: hematology, cardiovascular disease, and rare diseases.