Newborn babies deserve the best start into the future: LSI, Bonn/Germany, takes on InfanDx-project
The project InfanDx forms start of Life Science Inkubator’s new round of project development. The team around Ron Meyer, PD Dr. Matthias Keller und Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Deigner worked several years intensely around oxygen deficiency in newborns, called perinatal asphyxia, to identify biomarkers that help diagnosing critically injured babies early enough. Through its incubation in LSI the InfanDx-project shall take the most critical steps towards marketability. The project is generously supported through grants of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
“Despite of significant progress in the intensive care for newborns perinatal asphyxia still represents a significant risk-factor for cerebral impairment. We are very happy to include into our pipeline this project that combines scientific excellence with a very high medical need”, declares Dr. Joerg Fregien, CEO of Life Science Inkubator Research Institute.
Perinatal asphyxia may occur before, during or after delivery. While it is today extremely difficult to diagnose asphyxia with newborns immediately after birth still about 40% of babies who suffered brain damage are not identified early enough. This situation is especially frustrating as most of these children could be helped through therapeutic hypothermia, a controlled cooling therapy that critically needs to be started earliest possible within the first 6 hours after birth. Only in this short therapeutic time window this treatment has proven to be effective and to avoid lifelong disabilities such as cerebral palsy/spasticism, blindness and other forms of neurological impairments. The biomarkers developed by the InfanDx-project will be the first diagnostic tool to reliably identify the babies in need early enough. “As soon as we manage to bring those biomarkers to an easily used clinical test, we will have achieved a true milestone in neonatology and we will avoid so much suffering for children and parents alike.” Dr. Keller explains, himself neonatologist and medical director at the children’s hospital Dritter Orden in Passau, Germany.
This high medical need and the new option to prevent lifelong disability for these newborn babies finally convinced the investment consortium of the Life Science Inkubator. In January 2015 the consentaneous decision was taken to accept InfanDx for incubation.
About LSI:
The Life Science Inkubator (LSI) offers room for visionary founders and entrepreneurs. Research projects from the fields of Biotech, Pharma and MedTech are taken into incubation for a maximum of three years to take critical steps towards marketability. As public-private partnership LSI enjoys coverage through federal German and NRW state government, private investors and leading research societies such as Max-Planck-, Fraunhofer- and Helmholtz-Society. This makes LSI a highly capable and unique concept throughout Germany.
contact:
Life Science Inkubator: Marion Schink, communication, Tel. +49 (0)228-22 77 90 14, schink@life-science-inkubator.de
InfanDx: Ron Meyer, Tel. +49 (0) 172 266 5552, ron.meyer@infandx.com
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