On July 1st, the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs announced the winners of the m4 award: five teams of researchers from Bavaria receive research funding of about 500,000 € each, as well as professional consulting services. With this support, their life science projects shall be developed further, so that they can form the basis for a business. The m4 award promotes in particular marketable innovation in the field of "personalized medicine". Thus, another impulse will be given to the Bavarian founder scene in the important key technology biotech.
"Enormous potential lies dormant in our research facilities in Bavaria. We want to use the m4 Award to put even more effort into unearthing this treasure' ,” said State Secretary Katja Hessel during the m4 award ceremony at the Munich residence. Five projects were awarded, which all have high economic prospects of success with a focus on applications in personalized medicine. The projects receive half a million Euros each for the next two years. By then, they should be validated with regard to a subsequent practical application. The project management is also accompanied by intensive advisory services on the way to setting up a business.
The m4 award supports the establishment of young high-growth companies in the cutting-edge field of personalized medicine. Personalized medicine aims at developing drugs tailored to certain groups of patients, which are much more effective and safer than today's standard medicines.
Among the winners are two cancer researchers who want to develop a more effective treatment by taking into account the individual and molecular properties of the tumor: Prof Dr med Thomas Bumm from the University Hospital of Würzburg and Dr. Bernhard Frankenberger from the Helmholtz Zentrum München. Awardee Prof Dr Matthias Mann from the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried aims at improving the characterization of the specific properties of a tumor. For this, the highly sensitive method of mass spectrometry shall be introduced into clinical routine by a novel technique. The team of Prof Dr Alexander Gerbes and Dr Andreas Benesic from the LMU University Hospital is developing a cell system which can predict the liver-damaging effect of drugs for an individual patient. Prof Dr Herrmann Koepsell conducts research at the University of Würzburg, working on a new treatment concept against the widespread disease of diabetes.
Pictures and further information about the projects (in German)
About the m4 award
The m4 award is part of the infrastructural project „m4 Scouting & Incubation“ of the Munich Leading-Edge Cluster „m4 - Personalized Medicine and Targeted Therapies“. The m4 award was granted for the first time in 2011. In the framework of the Leading-Edge Cluster, the set-up of the m4 award is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The Free State of Bavaria grants for the m4 award a total of 8,5 mio euros until 2015 for Bavarian Pre-Seed projects in the areal of biotechnology with a focus on Personalized Medicine. The Munich Leading-Edge Cluster programme is managed by BioM. The m4 award is organised in whole Bavaria by BioM and netzwerk nordbayern. Projektträger Jülich is commissioned with its administration. Project partners are the technology transfer organisations KFT(Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), TUM ForTe (Technische Universität München), Ascenion, the division technology transfer at the Helmholtz Zentrum München, Max-Planck-Innovation and Bayerische Patentallianz.