The incubator UnternehmerTUM at the Technical University of Munich has opened Germany's first publicly accessible biotech laboratory. The "Bio.kitchen" is designed to provide everyone interested with access to free experimentation and is also open to startups.
Bio.kitchen's offerings span the fields of molecular biology, synthetic biology and microbiology. Rüdiger Trojok, co-founder and laboratory manager of Bio.kitchen, says:
"We want to pool the innovative power of all life science talents who enjoy experimenting and want to realize their own ideas, but who find no space for this either at a university or in industry."
The laboratory offers everything you need from DNA sequencing to sample analysis. All users also have access to the MakerSpace, which is located in the immediate vicinity of Bioküche, as well as to the UnternehmerTUM network.
Benign viruses instead of antibiotics
The laboratory meets the legal safety standards for Level 1 laboratories. This includes all microbiological and molecular biological work that is not considered to pose a risk to human health or the environment.
A particular focus of the work at Bio.kitchen is research into phages. These are benign personalized viruses that will hopefully make it possible to cure bacterial diseases without antibiotics in the future. Trojok says:
“It is absolutely possible that biohackers will solve the global problem of multi-resistant germs.”
