Munich Startup: What does your startup do? What problem do you solve?
Dr. Robert Macsics, CEO & Co-Founder: We are developing new antibiotics against multi-resistant bacteriaThese are increasingly becoming a real threat to our society and could lead to more than eight million deaths worldwide annually by 2050. Furthermore, our entire modern healthcare system is under threat, as all areas of health depend on effective antibiotics, for example, in transplants or chemotherapy for cancer. However, this is no longer guaranteed due to the growing resistance to existing antibiotics. At the same time, there have been hardly any innovative developments in recent decades that have yielded new antibiotics – making it all the more important that we counteract this dangerous trend with our approaches.
Munich Startup: But that's been around for a long time!
Robert Macsics: We work exclusively on mechanisms of action that are fundamentally different from those of already approved antibiotics. In this way, we avoid cross-resistance and ensure that bacteria cannot easily adapt to our active ingredients. A special approach that makes Smartbax unique is our concept of enzyme activation instead of classical inhibition. While typical antibiotics work by switching off an essential process in bacteria, we try to achieve the opposite: We examine processes that are very tightly upregulated in bacteria and overstimulate them, triggering a kind of self-destruction in the bacteria. This unconventional approach offers a number of advantages and opens up entirely new treatment options in certain situations where classical antibiotics often fail.
Spin-off without prior experience
Munich Startup: What is your founding story?
Robert Macsics: The background knowledge on which Smartbax is built was gained over many years of research at the Technical University of Munich. My doctoral advisor and co-founder, Prof. Dr. Stephan Sieber, recognized the application potential of our work early on and was able to secure several translational grants, which enabled us to take important steps toward a spin-off company. At that time, the project was still called "aBacter." Since my own doctoral thesis was related to this work, I began contributing to "aBacter" toward the end of my PhD. It was precisely during this period that we came into contact with our first investor, the Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund (BIVF).
When we realized that he had a serious interest in investing in our technology, the very real possibility of a spin-off suddenly emerged. I remember very clearly how inexperienced I was back then when it came to founding a startup; I hadn't even finished my PhD. Moreover, it was right at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which made everything much more complicated and unpredictable. Nevertheless, both Stephan and I recognized the special, perhaps once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that presented itself at that moment, and together with our third co-founder, Marco Janezic, who has always supported us as a business advisor, we simply went for it. In April 2021, Smartbax GmbH officially saw the light of day.
High development costs and skeptical investors
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Robert Macsics: Antibiotic development is a field with its own unique economic challenges. This is because the high development costs are often not offset by high sales, as doctors generally reserve novel antibiotics for the most critical cases to prevent the rapid development of new resistances. As a result, many large pharmaceutical companies have completely lost interest in antibiotic research – a major reason for the current resistance crisis.
This in turn leads to Startups like us Two key challenges remain: first, developing a product that is so effective and delivers so much real added value that it can thrive in this challenging market. Thanks to the exceptional mechanisms of action we are working on, we feel very well positioned. Second, convincing investors that an investment in a new antibiotic can actually pay off. It has been extremely helpful that we had a very strong and reputable anchor investor with strategic vision from the outset, the BIVF, who lent our approach the necessary credibility to attract further investors. Nevertheless, many investors in this sector are rather hesitant because the commercial risk is currently too high for them. While I am convinced that an investment in us will definitely be worthwhile because market conditions will eventually develop in our favor, we urgently need political initiatives to ensure that this doesn't happen only when death rates are already high and it is then essentially too late.
Finally, I would like to point out that, in addition to these very industry-specific challenges, we also had to contend with the same hurdles that plague almost all startups in Germany: excessive bureaucracy, overregulation, and a lack of risk appetite on the part of government agencies. We absolutely must address these issues if we want to remain internationally competitive.
On the road to clinical development
Munich Startup: Where would you like to be in one year, where in five years?
Robert Macsics: Our frontrunner program is currently in lead development, and we expect to be ready for clinical trials in two to three years. Accordingly, we plan to lay the groundwork next year by further optimizing the structure of our development candidate and sufficiently demonstrating its efficacy and added value in animal studies. If all goes well, in five years we could be nearing the end of our Phase I clinical trials and thus preparing for the start of Phase II, i.e., the first demonstration of efficacy in humans. These should be some exciting years ahead.
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
Robert Macsics: Munich is undoubtedly the best location for biotech in Germany. Biotech startups almost always emerge from cutting-edge research, and in Munich, with LMU and TU Munich, we not only have two of Germany's best universities, but also numerous research institutes such as the Max Planck Institute and the Helmholtz Center. This gives us an unparalleled concentration of top-level research and, consequently, a corresponding potential for spin-offs. An outstanding ecosystem has developed here, from which we greatly benefit. Regular networking meetings and pitching events take place, whether organized by Bio-M, TUM Venture Labs, or other organizations, providing opportunities to connect with potential investors and meet other founders with whom to exchange ideas on shared challenges.
The city's excellent educational landscape and high quality of life are also a major advantage when searching for skilled workers. Of course, not everything is perfect in Munich, but one at least gets the impression that the Bavarian state government has recognized the importance of a strong startup scene for Germany's economic standing and is therefore making efforts to improve the overall business environment.
Socially important, but still a hidden gem in the biotech industry.
Munich Startup: Hidden champion or shooting star?
Robert Macsics: Since we are still in the very early stages of product development and it will likely take at least another eight years before one of our antibiotics is approved, I'm currently struggling with both terms. In a direct comparison, however, we would certainly be more of a hidden champion, as we operate in a relatively unknown area within the biotech sector, due in no small part to the challenges mentioned above, while our efforts simultaneously have very high societal value. Depending on how dramatically the resistance crisis develops in the future, we could also quickly become a shooting star, although from the public's perspective, it would be undesirable for that to happen.
