Shareholding of Fraunhofer
Fraunhofer Venture
InnoCyte GmbH
The Company
The production of biological cells is a key process for pharma screening and tissue engineering. The validity of cell-based test series and the safety of artificial tissues are primarily dependent on the reproducibility of the cell material. Thus, many of the 40,000 cell cultivation laboratories around the world are interested in standardizing and automating production processes.
Filed for patent, the technology that makes it possible to tremendously reduce the effort required for the central "passage" process of the automated cell culture now constitutes the basis for the business idea: InnoCyte GmbH develops and markets a range of devices for the automated cell culture.
The team of founders has already developed device solutions for the production of biological cells at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (IPA) and in particular participated in the development of the core process of the cell culture passage.
Technology and Product
- from left to right: Roland Huchler, Dr. Michael Fritsche, Dirk Malthan
Cell cultures for biotechnical and pharmaceutical research may be produced in an automated process, thus, delivering higher quality through standardization. This procedure used to require complex robotics. InnoCyte GmbH, located in Stuttgart, Germany, has developed a technology based on pressure differences that is significantly simpler and more cost-efficient than existing solutions.
InnoCyte GmbH’s technology allows for the – to a large extent – automated production of cells. Split.It is the basic product of the Stuttgart company. It performs the central steps for producing cell cultures automatically. This reduces the risk of contamination and errors involved with manual processing. At the same time, the cell cultures' quality increases as all central processes are conducted according to a standardized scheme.
Today, system solutions for the automated cell culture are already available. However, these are equipped with complex robotics and, as a result, expensive. Split.It offers comparable functions at one sixth of the costs and, thus, is particularly attractive for medium-sized biotechnology enterprises and research laboratories at universities and hospitals.
In a first step, InnoCyte intends to address some 2,500 cell culture laboratories in Germany over the next few years. In the future, the Fraunhofer spin-off plans to also develop the European and North American markets.
Still, the development stage for the innovative high-tech product has not been completed yet. But as early as in the summer of 2012, Split.It will become available on the market. Meanwhile, the Stuttgart founders work on the development of further products for the automated cell culture as a useful add-on to Split.It functions.
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