Automation makes personalised medicine affordable
When a family business and an innovative start-up combine their strengths, solutions with real added value emerge: Bürkert Fluid Control Systems and Green Elephant Biotech combine fluidics expertise with sustainable cell culture technology. The result: technologies that make personalized medicine more affordable and promote laboratory products made from plant-based plastics.
It is not uncommon for the innovative power of a start-up to be hampered as soon as an investor comes on board and imposes overly complex processes. In the collaboration between the family business Bürkert Fluid Control Systems and Green Elephant Biotech (GEB), specialists in sustainable cell culture and laboratory technology, a conscious effort was made to prevent this. Now, it is not only the two companies that benefit, but also the users (image 1). As a biotech expert in sustainable cell culture technology in the life sciences sector, GEB – a start-up – is an innovative player in the biotechnology industry. This expertise and the networks it is part of as a result are very useful for the fluidics expert Bürkert. For its part, the family business contributes many years of expertise in planning and developing automated fluidics solutions. In addition, the collaboration benefits from regional proximity and a shared mother tongue. Felix Wollenhaupt, Co-Founder and Managing Director of GEB, explains: “We love working with Bürkert as a technology partner because the collaboration we have created allows us to close gaps in device development, fluid control, control engineering and system integration as a whole.”
Products for a regenerative economy
There are various GEB products that demonstrate the concrete benefits users derive from the collaboration: personalised medicine and laboratory consumables made from plant-based plastics (Figure 2) are examples of these. Personalised medicine can save lives, but is usually very expensive. This is because the products are manufactured in individual batch sizes, yet entail a similarly large amount of documentation and quality assurance work as series production does. It is particularly the labour costs involved that result in a high product price tag – which can reach the six to seven-figure euro range in some cases. Through automation, the innovative cell culture system CellScrew® can save personnel costs and produce personalised medicine in a way that is sustainable and efficient, bringing the products into a price bracket that can be covered by health insurance companies. The partnership between the companies, which pools expertise from the fields of fluidics automation and biotechnology, also creates significant added value for society – as do the plant-based plastic (PLA) products that the biotechnologists have created. Conventional laboratory consumables such as Petri dishes, pipette tips and reaction vessels typically rely on polystyrene, a plastic that is not biodegradable and is therefore problematic to dispose of. The PLA alternatives to these can make a significant contribution to companies cultivating sustainable business practices. The product examples referred to in this article clearly demonstrate the economic benefits that can arise from collaborations between innovative start-ups and renowned family businesses with flexible structures. Based on their experience, the fluidics experts at Bürkert are open to more cooperation – in areas such as food and beverage, new food, laboratories, and renewable energy.
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