Sybille Hahne Gründerpreis for Evorion founders

Today, Hans-Kleine Brüggeney, Robert Weingarten and Dr. Sebastian Bühren received the Sybille Hahne Gründerpreis, one of the most highly endowed founders’ awards in Germany. Together, and supported by Francisco Goycoolea and Bruno Moerschbacher, they are founders of the biotech start-up Evorion, aiming to develop microfluidic devices for the serial analysis of single cells, each embedded in its own hydrogel microbead. This is a potentially game changing technology. Biological systems, from biopolymers to cells to organisms, are characterised by a tremendous biodiversity. Two cells are never completely identical but today’s analytical tools typically only allow to determine average characteristics of the cells in a population. However, if this is e.g. a population of cancer cells from a tumour, just knowing the average characteristics of its cells might not be appropriate to device an efficient therapy. The ability to screen thousands of cells individually will first of all allow us to appreciate this diversity, but then also to analyse the potentially different responses of these cells to e.g. a cytostatic drug. It will also be possible to bring two different cells together and to analyse their interactions ‘online’, etc. etc. - the potential is enormous. We are convinced that Evorion will write a success story, and we will keep watching and supporting its authors: Hans, Robert, and Sebastian!