Biotech and Pharma in the City: The Munich Medicine Makers
Munich – Hope for many corona infected people and other patients could soon (also) come from Munich. More and more medical inventors and developers are settling here, hardly noticed.
373 biotech and pharmaceutical companies are located in and around Munich
For example in Martinsried behind the Großhadern Clinic, in Schwabing, and soon also in the Old Academy in the old town. Scientists work there in laboratories, developing syringes, tablets and new processes.
The industry is booming; according to a study by the economic department, there are already 373 biotech and pharmaceutical companies in and around the city, with 33,400 employees (up 91 percent since 2013). The Free State lets many grants jump in so that research can be carried out. Local companies are currently working on 126 drug candidates, 35 are in the final clinical phase III. And twelve drugs have already been approved. But who are the researchers? Here we present four Munich companies …
Ebenbuild: The digital lung
Munich University of Technology Professor Wolfgang Wall (57, Department of Biomechanics) had the idea for a digital lung twin long before the war pandemic, in 2007. Today it can soon be a blessing for sick people who are ventilated when. Because the accurate simulation of a patient’s lungs on the computer with the help of artificial intelligence shows precisely where the lung tissue has weak points and can cause ventilation damage.
This allows the patient to be ventilated more gently – this increases their chances of survival. With his former doctoral students Kei Müller (36), Jonas Biehler (38) and Karl-Robert Wichmann (34), the professor founded the Ebenbuild company in 2019, based in Schwabing’s Schinkelstrasse.
“Up until now you could X-ray a lung, but the doctor could not see at which point ventilation overstretched tissue,” explains Kei Müller, “with our technology this is the first time.” There are around 25,000 ventilation places in German hospitals. The goal is for the new simulation technology to help doctors at every workstation to optimally set up a machine. The biomechanics are still working on a large clinical study for market approval; they want to be on the market in 2023.
Eisbach Bio: The pill against the pandemic
The biotechnology company Eisbach Bio in Martinsried actually started developing drugs against cancer in 2019. When the molecular biologist Adrian Schomburg (38), the biochemist Andreas Ladurner (50) and their team then – rather by chance – analyzed the genome of the coronavirus, they found an enzyme there that is very similar to the one they were targeting in cancer . Since then, the Munich researchers at the Innovation and Start-up Center for Biotechnology (IZB) have been working feverishly to develop an active ingredient that combats and contains corona when a patient is infected.
This is also possible because sponsors, the Federal Ministry of Research (BMBF) and the Free State are promoting the development. Around 15 million euros will now flow into the production of a drug candidate and initial safety tests. This is followed by tests in hospitals with the first Covid patients. “It works in the laboratory, with absolutely no side effects,” says Adrian Schomburg about the AZ. “We can start the first phase of clinical trials in March, April. If the drug works as well as expected, we could get emergency approval in 2023.”
The Covid drug will then be available as a pill that can be manufactured quickly and inexpensively. They would need to be taken as soon as possible after the first symptoms and would also help with a breakthrough vaccination. “You would only have to take it once a day, for five days,” says Schomburg, “the treatment would cost less than 100 euros.”
Formycon: The Covid-19 virus blocker “FYB 207”
Dozens of drugs are currently being tested around the world to help coronary patients, and Pfizer recently applied for approval for the drug “Paxlovid”, for example. But a drug from Munich could soon take the horror of the pandemic: the Covid-19 virus blocker called “FYB 207”, which is to be administered as an injection as soon as you have symptoms of Covid disease. Scientists from the Formycon company are working on the drug in their laboratory in Martinsried (right behind the Großhadern Clinic).
The company actually develops “biosimilars”, which are inexpensive follow-up products to biological drugs (for example for eye ailments or inflammatory skin and intestinal diseases) whose patent protection has expired. 180 scientists from 25 countries are working on this, including Nepal, Iran and Brazil (sales in 2021: expected to be 40 million euros). The head of the company is the human biologist and patent inventor Carsten Brockmeyer (61).
“When the pandemic arrived in Germany in spring 2020,” he says, “I talked to the virologist Prof. Ulrike Protzer and the biotechnology professor Johannes Buchner from the Technical University of Munich, and we decided that we would have a Covid together – Develop drugs. ” One thing, “the virus blocks before it gets into the cell, and it also provides broad protection against the coronavirus mutants”.
A number of research grants have been approved, including 12.7 million euros from the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs. And it looks good after a year of research: “We have shown that it works extremely well in the laboratory,” says Brockmeyer. “FYB 207 is very effective in preventing the infection of cells, even in the case of the rapidly spreading SARS-CoV-2 variants, in which vaccines lose their effectiveness.” Formycon is currently delivering the clinical trial, which is scheduled to start in the first half of 2022. If everything goes well, FYB 207 could hit the market by 2023.
Medigene: Hope for the Cancer Revolution
Seven floors on Lochhamer Straße in Martinsried, four of which are laboratories: around 40 immunologists, biologists and biotechnologists from the biopharmaceutical company Medigene conduct research here. It develops cancer immunotherapies based on T cells that eliminate cancer cells. “We want to develop therapies that fundamentally improve the lives of patients,” explains Dolores Schendel, Head of the Board and Research, who has been researching in this area since the 1970s.
The American was professor of immunology at the Munich LMU, headed the Institute for Molecular Immunology at the Helmholtz Center and wrote more than 200 scientific publications. She has now been working in research for over 50 years and has been awarded the Federal Cross of Merit. Why doesn’t she like to stop? “I just firmly believe,” she says to the AZ, “that this therapy can heal and that no more metastases will come back.” The first product candidates are in clinical development.