Solutions and Technologies in Biomedicine

Biomedicine is a highly productive subdiscipline of human biology at the interface between medicine and biology. Its global market volume is estimated at around 500 billion dollars by 2025. Biopharmaceuticals and medical technologies for this field are growing strongly: They currently generate sales of over 19 billion euros in Germany and are among the most productive and research-intensive industries. Nevertheless, biomedicine currently faces numerous challenges that affect both basic research and clinical application.

In cancer research, it is crucial to develop therapies that target cancer cells without damaging healthy cells. In addition, the mechanisms that lead to the development of resistance in current treatments must be overcome. Increasing antibiotic resistance is also a critical issue that biomedicine is addressing. Resistance to antibiotics is making it increasingly difficult to treat bacterial infections, so the development of new, alternative drugs is urgently needed. In addition, the use of cell and gene therapies, such as CRISPR technology, offers great potential for the treatment of genetic diseases. Many unanswered questions remain, however, with regard to safe and efficient application, ethics, and regulatory issues. Finally, the management of pandemics such as COVID-19 and the development of vaccines and therapeutic agents for emerging infections remain a major challenge for global health.

We combine our expertise in production engineering and biotechnology to manufacture pharmaceutical and medical engineering products. Many production processes in the pharmaceutical industry are based on technical mixing processes. The quality of the mixture not only determines the quality of products such as active pharmaceutical ingredients and nanoparticles, but ultimately also their effectiveness. Together with FDX Fluid Dynamix GmbH, we have developed FDmiX, a technology platform that achieves mixtures of previously unattainable homogeneity with minimal mixing times and is scalable across a wide range of volumetric flow rates. This enables efficient and robust series production of pharmaceuticals and products for the chemical industry.

We are also working on methods and approaches to prevent infections and control or kill the spread of pathogens. Whether in a medical or production context: Various antimicrobial strategies are possible through chemical, physical or mechanical means. We are also improving the surfaces of implants, thereby helping to prevent clinical complications after dental, hip, or knee surgery. A new inline CT system also enables 100% inspection of medical plastic parts for the first time and, for example, checks heart valves 50 times faster than conventional measurement methods thanks to AI-supported data analysis.