Accelerating medical solutions

In October 2021, Dr. Tanja Rosenmund, head of SPARK-BIH, together with her team welcomed 10 new projects to the SPARK-BIH program. She and her team are excited to support the new SPARKees to translate their innovation from bench to bedside.

SPARK Europe is excited to announce the first SPARK Europe featured podcast series. Dr. Felix Lorenz, SPARKee and founder of the Berlin-based Captain T-Cell start-up project, explains what technology lies behind Captain T-Cell, how it can help transform cancer therapy for patients, and why he wanted to start a company.

The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research was so impressed by the research proposal from SPARKee Prof. Simone Spuler that it made €3.3 million available to the team to carry out a clinical trial. Prof. Spuler and her team are using muscle stem cells to build new muscle. The first patient will be treated in a few months' time.

SPARK Europe again offers the training course on Biomedical Innovation and Entrepreneurship for students and postdocs from European SPARK associated institutions. The course takes place online from October 4th to 15th, 2021 and provides an understanding of how translational projects are developed and companies are created, established, and funded. The goal of the course is to enhance the students creative, innovative and entrepreneurial skills.

SPARK Europe was represented at the BIONNALE 2021 by five SPARK project teams from Finland, Norway, Israel & Germany. The SPARK Europe teams pitched their translational projects & business ideas on the virtual stage in front of representatives of the healthcare and life sciences industry. Charité and DHZB pediatric cardiologist PD. Dr. Boris Schmitt and program manager Dr. Tanja Rosenmund represented SPARK-BIH at this year's BIONNALE.

To mark the occasion of Rare Disease Day 2021 on February 28, the Berlin Institute of Health spoke to SPARKee Prof. Peter Kühnen in the BIH podcast about hereditary obesity. Prof. Peter Kühnen studied in a clinical trial a new drug targeting a promising target for treatment of hereditary obesity. The SPARK-BIH program funded the respective project of Prof. Peter Kühnen and Prof. Heike Biebermann.

Dr. Panagiotis Fikatas, Senior Surgeon at Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, invented a surgical device using a knot technology for minimally invasive surgery. Early prototyping and development work was significantly supported by the SPARK-BIH program with the Validation Fund and funds from the Stiftung Charité.