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University spin-off T3 Pharmaceuticals wins start-up award
The start-up company T3 Pharmaceuticals, a spin-off of the Biozentrum, University of Basel, is the Business Plan winner of the competition held by Venture. The vision of the young enterprise is to improve the lives of cancer patients through innovative treatment approaches.
01 July 2016
T3 Pharmaceuticals is a biopharmaceutical company, which develops novel therapies for cancer patients. The founder and CEO Dr. Simon Ittig and Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Christoph Kasper, both former postdocs of the Biozentrum of the University of Basel, are developing the next generation of bacterial cancer treatments: Their method uses live bacteria that specifically infect solid tumors, fighting these with a technique developed at the University of Basel.
The start-up competition from Venture awards outstanding business ideas and business plans; it is one of the most important distinctions for young companies in Switzerland. 230 teams responded to the call to participate in this year’s Start-up Competition: 114 submitted their business ideas and 116 business plans. A jury, consisting of experienced entrepreneurs and investors, selected T3 Pharmaceuticals as the winner of the Business Plan competition. The prize money of 60,000 Swiss francs will support the start-up company in its setting-up and development phase. TheMOFcompany (ETH Zurich, ZHAW, PSI) won the best Business Idea award.
Innovative cancer therapy using live bacteria
The vision of T3 Pharmaceuticals is to improve the lives of cancer patients with new approaches in treatment. Although significant progress has been achieved with conventional cancer therapies, there is still a great need for innovative drugs to treat cancer. T3 Pharmaceuticals has taken up this challenge with the development of highly specific and efficient treatments using live bacteria.
The T3-Pharma team, in collaboration with researchers from the Biozentrum and the Department of Biomedicine at the University of Basel, has developed a method using bacteria to inject a wide spectrum of proteins into eukaryotic cells. Compared with conventional methods, this new technique has some advantages. It has proven to be very robust and efficient, as the protein is delivered within one minute and several proteins can be transferred simultaneously. The aim of the researchers and founders of the company is to develop the system further so that it can also be applied as a treatment.
