Neuron-D on the longlist for Nature’s “Spinoff Prize”

Neuron-D, a biotech company co-founded by DZNE, was selected to the top 12 start-ups of 2023 in the preliminary round for the “Spinoff Prize”. The prize is awarded by the renowned scientific journal Nature in partnership with technology company Merck.

Neuron-D, based in Dresden, Germany, was jointly established in 2019 by DZNE and the Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research Dresden (IPF). The company has developed a novel approach for neuronal disease modeling and drug testing.

“Our high-throughput screening system is aimed at finding drugs for the treatment of a diverse list of diseases, including brain tumors and Alzheimer’s disease,“ says Caghan Kizil, co-founder and Scientific Advisor of Neuron-D. The neurobiologist, now an Associate Professor of Neurological Sciences at Columbia University, helped launch the company when he was a research group leader at DZNE.

Neuron-D’s technology is based on a 3D cell culture method, which allows to replicate key features of neuronal networks as they occur in the human brain and of the pathology associated with brain diseases. This approach stems from DZNE studies on neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and research by IPF on novel biomaterials.

Juni 2023