Dynamic42 GmbH has suc­cess­fully com­pleted a six-fig­ure fundrais­ing in early sum­mer 2019 as an impor­tant step towards future growth. The new invest­ment round will enable Dynamic42 to fur­ther its prod­uct devel­op­ment and mar­ket expan­sion. bm|t beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen gmbh (bm|t) made the invest­ment through its Thüringer Start-up Fund (TSF). Dr. Knut Ren­nert and Mar­tin Raasch, man­ag­ing direc­tors at Dynamic42, agree “the invest­ment will sig­nif­i­cantly scale up our oper­a­tions and open new busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties. We are pleased to have bm|t on board as a strong part­ner at our side. We highly appre­ci­ate the sup­port and trust bm‑t has given us.” Dynamic42, based in Jena, was founded in 2018 and devel­ops microflu­idic chip sys­tems to cul­ti­vate human cells mim­ic­k­ing real­is­tic body con­di­tions. “Our sys­tems uniquely incor­po­rate adjust­ments for body tem­per­a­ture and nutri­ent sup­ply, which has been used in cyto­log­i­cal research over a long time. Our sys­tems also offer the pos­si­bil­ity to expose human cells to pres­sure and shear­ing through sim­u­lated blood flow. Addi­tion­ally, our sys­tem is able to inte­grate a three-dimen­sional cell struc­ture with immune cells into the chip. Both com­po­nents imi­tate the multi-cell struc­ture of the human body sig­nif­i­cantly bet­ter than exist­ing mod­els and pro­vide a real­is­tic sim­u­la­tion of cell func­tions and inter­ac­tions”, explains Mar­tin Raasch. The team has suc­cess­fully estab­lished organ mod­els of the human liver, intestines and lung. “We started with the idea to rebuild and cul­ti­vate sim­ple blood ves­sels under real­is­tic body con­di­tions. Those com­po­nents remain an inte­gral part of our mod­els as they enable the inter­con­nec­tion of organs and func­tion as impor­tant trans­mit­ters in case of dis­eases (esp. rel­e­vant for immune cells). As we moved to the repli­ca­tion of entire organ mod­els, such as the liver, our project gained com­plex­ity. The liver is one of the most crit­i­cal organs for drug inter­ac­tions. Gen­eral effects, side effects and poten­tial tox­i­c­ity of new drugs and ther­a­pies are bet­ter inves­ti­gated on real­is­tic human cell mod­els than on two-dimen­sional cell cul­tures and ani­mal mod­els only. Our goal is to improve drug safety and data qual­ity in pre­clin­i­cal stud­ies, as well as to reduce side effects and the need for ani­mal exper­i­ments”, said Dr. Knut Ren­nert. “The anatom­i­cally cor­rect place­ment of human cells and the inte­gra­tion of func­tional immune cells espe­cially in con­nec­tion with a web-based clas­si­fi­ca­tion of vital­ity and func­tion­al­ity para­me­ters offer high value to clients and large poten­tial to gain addi­tional mar­ket share in the rapidly grow­ing organ-on-chip mar­ket”, stated Ste­fan Jahn, invest­ment man­ager at bm|t.

bm|t beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen GmbH is a fully-owned sub­sidiary of Thüringer Auf­baubank based in Erfurt, Ger­many. It is the lead­ing address for ven­ture cap­i­tal and pri­vate equity invest­ments in Thuringia. bm|t cur­rently man­ages 8 funds with a total vol­ume of EUR 320mm. It invests in inno­v­a­tive firms in nearly all sec­tors and cor­po­rate devel­op­ment stages – from seed to growth phase and busi­ness suc­ces­sions. (www.bm‑t.com)

Dynamic42 GmbH was founded in 2018 as a spin-off of the Cen­ter for Sep­sis Con­trol and Care (CSCC) from the uni­ver­sity clinic in Jena. Dynamic42 devel­ops and dis­trib­utes humane micro phys­i­o­log­i­cal sys­tems (MPS) and organ-on-chip mod­els with inte­grated immune sys­tem com­po­nents for research and test­ing of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts as well as new ther­a­pies with nanopar­ti­cles, chem­i­cals and food addi­tives. (www.dynamic42.com)