Each of the five winning teams will receive €500,000 for their project to solve urgent medical challenges. The M4 Award will support the further development and validation of their respective project ideas in preparation for a spin-off. The scientists will receive not only financial support but also active support from BioM and other partners and industry experts.
Prof. Ralf Huss, Managing Director of BioM, explains:
"With 15 spin-offs to date, the M4 Award is a true success story. This year's honored projects once again demonstrate the impressive potential of medical research here in Bavaria."
Bavaria's State Secretary for Economic Affairs Roland Weigert says about the competition:
"The M4 Award recognizes outstanding academic research groups that have the courage to translate scientific findings into practice. In doing so, we are creating the necessary conditions for Bavaria to further establish itself as a leading biotechnology location in research, innovation, and entrepreneurship."
And Dr. Petra Burgstaller, responsible for coordinating the M4 Awards at BioM, adds:
“We are very happy for the winning teams and will continue to support them with all our strength on their path to becoming a successful biotech company.”
Four winning teams from Munich
Among the five winning teams of this year’s edition of the Pre-start-up competition There are four projects from Munich. TherVacB from Helmholtz Munich is developing a therapeutic vaccine against hepatitis B. According to the WHO, this infectious disease kills over 820,000 people worldwide annually. Preclinical models of chronic infection have already demonstrated the effectiveness of the optimized approach. Initial clinical trials are scheduled to begin soon.
TUBiRA is also conducting research at Helmholtz Munich. The project is influencing certain immune cell signals to develop therapeutics for the previously difficult-to-treat disease rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Funded by the M4 Award, this project will optimize current lead molecules to identify preclinical candidates. This should enable the establishment of a spin-off company that will advance these molecules from the preclinical phase to the clinical proof-of-concept phase for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.
Approximately one-third of all infections are urinary tract infections, which primarily affect women, the elderly, and diabetics. Diagnosis requires a multi-day process in a central laboratory—time that is insufficient for rapid treatment decisions. BugSense from the Technical University of Munich has established a paper-based test with automated image analysis for the rapid and reliable diagnosis of urinary tract infections. The test is intended to accelerate treatment decisions and simplify patient logistics.
BIOspire was developed at the Bundeswehr University Munich with the goal of combining artificial intelligence and live-cell imaging to tackle medical challenges. It combines hardware and software. The hardware enables high-resolution imaging of living cells at the nanometer scale, revealing previously unknown cellular details. The software tracks patient health data, visualizes the hardware's results, predicts possible outcomes, and supports proactive treatments. Among other things, it should enable the detection of living cells such as particularly vital sperm. This could optimize the success of in vitro fertilization.
About the M4 Award
The M4 Award is presented every two years by BioM, the networking organization for the biotechnology industry in Munich and Bavaria. First awarded in 2011, 15 spin-offs have been successfully established since then. This year, 31 teams from research institutions across Bavaria applied. In addition to the four winners from Munich, RevoBITs from Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg also prevailed.
The Munich-based startup Tubulis is one of the previous winners of the pre-startup competition. Jonas Helma-Smets, CSO and co-founder of Tubules, remembers his team's victory:
"Winning the M4 Award was a critical milestone on our journey to making Tubulis what it is today. This award, and the associated €500,000 grant, has enabled us to advance our novel research approaches to treating cancer. Today, with €60 million in Series B funding behind us, we are more motivated than ever and grateful for the support we've received on this exciting journey."
