It's hard to imagine how the coronavirus pandemic would have turned out if Dr. Henri Knobloch and Dr. Tobias Loka had met at the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) in Potsdam back in 2018 instead of 2020. If they hadn't rolled out their patent in November 2023 - but in autumn 2019 instead. And if it had been used in hospitals straight away! Because the two founders' recently filed international patent application for "real-time metagenomic diagnostics" can identify a respiratory pathogen within hours.
"You no longer have to grow cultures to find out which pathogen is at work, as Robert Koch did around 1880," says Knobloch. "Our aim was to finally find a modern, smart solution." For centuries, the type of pathogen used for treatment was literally written in the stars - the company name "Seqstant LiveGene" alludes to this. It is pronounced like the nautical measuring instrument "Sextant"; the inserted "q" refers to sequencing, the basis of the diagnostic approach. Its use is intended to save patients precious time: Therapies could be applied more quickly and, above all, in a more targeted manner, pain could be alleviated, deaths avoided and perhaps even pandemics contained. And the healthcare system could save a lot of money - thanks to the targeted use of resources.
In the sober rooms of a spacious new building on Rheinstraße in Teltow, there is plenty of space for such visions. And, of course, for the five team members of Seqstant and their product LiveGene. For months, moving boxes have been waiting to be unpacked in the office of co-founder and Managing Director Knobloch. "We have more important things to do," he waves them away. For example, the rollout of the patent, the approval of the product or the financing, says the entrepreneur. Only the combination with a specially developed biochemical barcode for the sample material turns it into an invention worth protecting - which developed from scientific project to product in record time, emphasizes Dr. Ute Rzeha from Potsdam Transfer, the interface between research and business at the University of Potsdam. She supported the company wherever she could to achieve the milestones set.
Bioinformatician and co-founder Dr. Tobias Loka is primarily responsible for the technological implementation. At the end of 2015, he followed his doctoral supervisor, Professor Bernhard Renard, from Cologne to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) in Berlin. Their goal: the real-time analysis of pathogens. A prototype already existed at the RKI. When Renard accepted the call to HPI in 2020, Loka joined him. By then, his own research had progressed so far that it was time to think about putting it into practice. He met Henri Knobloch at HPI. He had studied Biosensors & Diagnostics in the UK, gained laboratory and management experience in a large company and was keen to embark on the adventure of a spin-off. Together, Knobloch and Loka approached Potsdam Transfer to apply for the EXIST start-up grant from the Federal Ministry of Economics. This is the complicated, two-part variant, which allows 18 months of research until market maturity and then up to another 18 months for the start-up process. "We are extremely grateful for the grant and the support from Potsdam Transfer," says Knobloch. Because the hurdles are high. Ute Rzeha lists the following: improving data analysis, providing results reports, setting up the cloud infrastructure, preparing for certification - "the EU directives have just been tightened," adds Knobloch. Then the development of a marketing strategy, the validation of the method with cooperation partners, the development of the company portal, the follow-up financing. There was enough work for more people.
Initially, the founders wanted to tackle the detection of respiratory and wound infection pathogens, but EXIST only covered the first level of funding: the patent application and the studies for a medical technology process. So far, Seqstant has analyzed the samples of 400 patients at a university hospital, had to provide the laboratory material, cover the personnel costs and - of course - its own labor. Costs: "Between 80,000 and 100,000 euros for a small study," says Knobloch. A seed investment has now been successfully completed, securing further strong support for Seqstant.
They all believe in the new approach: the technology is based on the existing infrastructure of the laboratories. As before, the samples must be prepared before sequencing so that the genomic material of the germs can be extracted. The molecular barcode, which is part of the patent, is added to them at the molecular level. Sequencing then begins. You can watch the material being read out "in real time" in the laboratory. The pathogen can be identified like a puzzle. "The computing power for this is in the cloud," explains Loka, who wrote the necessary algorithm with his colleague Dr. Milena Kraus. Kraus, who holds a doctorate in biotechnology, specializes in the transfer of bioinformatics methods into clinical use. The data centers of the servers are located in Germany, so that the health data is absolutely secure. In any case, the laboratories do not pass on any patient data to Seqstant, only a number. Biotechnologist Georg Wrettos and industrial engineer German Molina Cardenas are responsible for quality management at the company; highly complex probability calculations are their specialty. And if all goes well, the entrepreneurs from Teltow will be able to help put an end to respiratory diseases more quickly from spring 2024.
This article was published in the university magazine Portal Transfer 2024.