Bioprocess technology company PS Biotech GmbH receives Series A funding following the successful market entry of its Feed Plate®

In the spring of 2013, PS Biotech GmbH, a spin-off of RWTH Aachen and the DWI Leibniz Institute for Interactive Materials, received seed funding from High-Tech Gründerfonds to finance the market entry of the Feed Plate®. The Feed Plate® is a tool serving the field of industrial biotechnology, enabling cost-effective screening for the optimal production strain under fed-batch conditions using microtiter plates. Over the last year, PS Biotech could attract a first wave of prominent customers. The company now announces that it has been successful in raising a Series A of financing to accelerate the company’s growth and expand its product portfolio.

Industrial biotechnology aims to develop and implement energy-saving and resource-conserving production processes, with one example being the increased use of microbial production processes in the biotechnological manufacturing of recombinant pharmaceuticals.

At the initial stage of this type of process chains, typically a pool of several thousand clones is being produced in order to identify the optimal strain for future industrial-scale production. However, running these primary screenings on current technology often results in costly misreadings with regards to the efficiency of a strain of bacteria. Consequently, even repeated screening does not necessarily lead to optimal results, as the underlying cause, the wide gap in nutrient conditions in primary screenings as compared to those prevalent in high-volume bioreactors is not being accounted for.

Feed Plate®, PS Biotech’s (www.psbiotech.de) polymer-based feeding system, now enables customers from the fields of biomanufacturing and research to easily and reliably select clones during the primary screening as the tool allows microorganisms to be fed in a controlled manner under fed-batch conditions. The Feed Plate® therefore not only makes selecting the production strain significantly easier, but also ensures the selection process is more reliable than previously available methods. In addition, by using microtiter plates, the Feed Plate® can come into play in high-throughput settings. PS Biotech’s production line was established last year and the Feed Plate® has been available on the market since the beginning of 2014.

Kristina Bruellhoff, managing director and co-founder of PS Biotech GmbH, is pleased with the company’s performance during its first year on the market: “The large amount of positive feedback from our customers testifies that we’re on the right track, acting as proof of the Feed Plate®’s easy handling and the high reproducibility of results: characteristics that other systems on the market are lacking”.

In the meantime, Feed Plate® has become available with a wide range of release rates, substrates and plate formats and was able to generate convincing results in the labs of Henkel, winning an important customer for PS Biotech early on. “The reduction in workload and the associated savings experienced by our customers using the Feed Plate® are substantial,” adds Sebastian Selzer, managing director and co-founder.

“The Feed Plate® offers customers considerably more degrees of freedom in respect to the range of possible nutrients – and thus the range of micro-organisms that can be cultivated. We are delighted that the company is growing rapidly and that it could attract a further investor,” says Dr. Christian Jung of HTGF.

 

About PS Biotech GmbH
PS Biotech GmbH is a bioprocess technology company based in Aachen, founded in 2013 as a spin-off of RWTH Aachen and the DWI Leibniz Institute for Interactive Materials. The company develops, produces and markets polymer-based nutrient release systems for the fed-batch feeding of micro-organisms using microtiter plates. The product portfolio features a wide range of nutrient/ plate combinations, with additional nutrients other than glucose now available. Furthermore, PS Biotech GmbH also offers custom solutions tailor-made to the needs of its customers.

 

Contact:
Kristina Bruellhoff
PS Biotech GmbH
Kackertstr. 4
52072 Aachen
Tel.: 0241-894 6441-10
www.psbiotech.com
info@psbiotech.com

 

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
High-Tech Gruenderfonds invests in young, high potential high-tech start-ups. The seed financing provided is designed to enable start-ups to take an idea through prototyping and to market launch. Typically, High-Tech Gruenderfonds invests EUR 500,000 in the seed stage, with the potential for up to a total of EUR 2 million per portfolio company in follow-on financing. Investors in this public/private partnership include the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, the KfW Banking Group, as well as strategic corporate investors including ALTANA, BASF, Bayer, B. Braun, Robert Bosch, CEWE, Daimler, Deutsche Post DHL, Deutsche Telekom, Evonik, media + more venture Beteiligungs GmbH & Co. KG, METRO, Qiagen, RWE Innogy, SAP, Tengelmann and Carl Zeiss. High-Tech Gruenderfonds has about EUR 576 million under management in two funds (EUR 272 million HTGF I, EUR 304 million HTGF II).

 

Contact:

High-Tech Gründerfonds Management GmbH
Dr. Christian Jung
Schlegelstraße 2
53113 Bonn
Tel: + 49 228 / 82 30 01-00
Fax: + 49 228 / 82 30 00-5
info@htgf.de
www.high-tech-gruenderfonds.de