Wednesday, 17 September, 2014
Nanion Technologies Nominated for the Deutscher Zukunftspreis
CeNS Spin-Off is nominated for the Federal Presidents Award for Technology and Innovation
Source: Deutscher Zukunftspreis
The management team at Nanion Technologies is one of three nominees for the Deutscher Zukunftspreis, the German president's award for technology and innovation. As announced today, the team has been nominated for Nanion's latest automated screening platform, the SyncroPatch 384/768PE, which enables completely new strategies in drug discovery and scientific research.
As one of the leading industrial nations, Germany is known for its strength in technical innovation and entrepreneurship with a strong focus on product quality. The Deutscher Zukunftspreis (German Future Award), by which the German Federal President rewards cutting-edge technological innovations, which also have a high potential for commercial success and societal benefit, is the country's most prestigious award for technology and innovation.
At a press conference in Munich today, the Office of Federal President Joachim Gauck announced the nomination of Nanion Technologies' management team for the development and successful market entry of the SyncroPatch 384/768PE, a chip-based platform allowing high throughput screening of compounds affecting ion channels. Ion channels are proteins residing in the membranes of cells of the human body. Because ion channel dysfunction underlies diverse diseases and their symptoms, they are highly important both from the basic biomedical science and drug development stand point. The SyncroPatch 384/768PE is the first platform ever to allow functional ion channel screening on a truly industrial scale, with novel possibilities and great potential of bringing new and safe medication to the market faster. Dr. Niels Fertig (CEO), Dr. Andrea Brüggemann (CSO), and Michael George (CTO) are the team behind the project "High Throughput Ion Channel Screening - from the University Bench to Global Player" nominated for this year's Deutscher Zukunftspreis.
Dr. Niels Fertig, spokesperson, co-founder and CEO of Nanion Technologies, says: "We are thrilled and feel very honoured to be nominated for the most prestigious award for technology and innovation in Germany, and we look forward to the great event in Berlin where the award winning team will be announced. Of course we're biased, but the SyncroPatch 384/768PE clearly has great potential to revolutionize ion channel screening, thus enabling biotech and pharma companies to bring better drugs to the market at a faster pace."
The final winner will be selected by the jury on November 19 in Berlin and will be announced on the evening of that day by Federal President Joachim Gauck, at a major event hosted and broadcasted by the public television channel, ZDF.
About Nanion Technologies: Nanion Technologies is a one-stop-shop for ion channel drug discovery and screening technologies as well as sophisticated research instrumentation. Nanion was founded in 2002 as a spin-off from the Center for Nanoscience (CeNS) of the University of Munich. Nanion's team has developed and successfully established four generations of automated patch clamp instruments for sophisticated and high throughput applications in ion channel research and drug discovery (Port-a-Patch, Patchliner and SyncroPatch product families). Further product lines are for cardiotoxicity screening (CardioExcyte 96), for parallel bilayer recordings (Orbit 16), and for parallel membrane transporter protein recordings (SURFE2R). Since 2014, Nanion carries Axion's multi-electrode array (MEA) systems in Europe and China.