SaxoCell – »Living Medicines« Made in Saxony

Saxon consortium wins contract in the future cluster initiative (Clusters4Future) of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

On February 3, 2021, the funding of the SaxoCell research consortium was announced in a digital press conference by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). This consists of experts from the TU Dresden, the University of Leipzig, the Chemnitz Clinic and the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology. Together with partners from academia and industry, the project partners want to make novel cell and gene therapies available for previously incurable diseases over the next three years.

Biomedical research is currently at a crossroads, where the development, production and application of innovative therapy methods are technically possible, but their widespread use would place a heavy burden on the healthcare system - both financially and logistically.

The SaxoCellconsortium has set itself the task of transferring new technologies with the potential to treat previously incurable diseases into clinical application.

At the Fraunhofer IZI in Leipzig, such a new drug is already being produced with the CAR-T cell therapy for the treatment of rare forms of blood cancer. The living medicinal product is also used successfully in the Saxon university clinics (DD, L).

Numerous other cell and gene therapies are on the threshold of clinical application and will find their way into everyday medical practice in the coming years. The aim must therefore be to make their manufacturing processes so efficient through automation, digitization and artificial intelligence that they will be accessible to many patients. The intelligent networking of innovative forms of therapy with modern manufacturing processes is the prerequisite for the personalized precision medicine of tomorrow - precise, efficient and affordable.

With SaxoCell, a Saxon association of universities, clinics, research institutions and companies will be funded over the next three years, which will address the development and translation of new therapies and their manufacturing processes.

The aim is also to strengthen the regional biomedical and biotechnological industry and to further expand it through settlements and start-ups.

With this concept, SaxoCell has won the nationwide award procedure of the BMBF as one of seven funded consortia against the 137 proposals originally submitted.

To the funding program Zukunftscluster-Initiative (Clusters4Future) of the BMBF

"Use the clout of regional networks to create the innovations of the future from excellent research [...]", is how the BMBF describes the Clusters4Future initiative on its own website. »As the new flagship of the Federal Government's High-Tech Strategy 2025, the future clusters make a special contribution to knowledge and technology transfer. With the regional approach of cluster funding, they tie directly to cutting-edge research and thus ensure that technological and social innovations arrive more quickly in people's everyday lives. At the same time, they help Germany to maintain its strong position among the global innovation leaders and to master the challenges in important future fields [...].«

Learn more about SaxoCell

Source: Press release Fraunhofer IZI from November 04.02.2021nd, XNUMX