Another insightful interview from BIO-Europe: We spoke with Dr. Rüdiger Jankowsky of AATec Medical, discussing how this young start-up, established by medical doctors from Munich University Hospital, is aiming to unlock the therapeutic potential of alpha-1-antitrypsin in respiratory diseases. Dr. Jankowsky elaborates on how this anti-inflammatory, protease inhibiting molecule works and talks about the critical role of partnerships in bringing innovative treatments to patients as quickly as possible.
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We are AATec Medical. We are a biotech company from
Munich in Germany and we are quite young. So we were founded
just two years ago by medical doctors. So we come from the clinical routine. So our founders were medical doctors
and they are all still medical doctors
at the University Clinic of Munich. And they found interesting approaches
for fighting inflammatory diseases of the lung, of the airways,
so the respiratory system. And that is what we want
to treat with our molecule. So are a start-up
developing a therapeutic protein for respiratory diseases. And what's the mode of action? The mode of action is anti-inflammation and combined with protease inhibition. So we have a molecule
which is an endogenous, a human protein, and that is working
by the inhibition of proteases and by the modulation of cytokines. So it suppresses pro-inflammatory
cytokines like IL-8 for example, and it promotes anti
inflammatory cytokines like IL-10. So we have a combined effect of protease
inhibition and immuno modulation. All right. How important are partnerships
to the company? As a biotech company,
we are keen to establish partnerships just in order to accelerate
the development of our product and also to make it available to a broad
patient population as soon as possible. So for that, we would like to establish
partnerships with other biotech companies, but also with larger
major pharmaceutical companies for the late stage development and also
for the later commercialization. And that's why you're here at BIO-Europe? Exactly. BIO-Europe is a fantastic platform
for meeting these companies, for meeting the people, to maintain networks,
to establish new contacts in order to build successful partnerships
for our products. And that is a fantastic opportunity
to meet so many people
in a short period of time in one place. So we like it a lot. Right, how is it going so far? It is going well. It is going well. The industry is quite vibrant
for the time being. You can feel it. There's a lot of great science going on. There's a lot of interest
from pharmaceutical companies We are all a bit affected by the macro economic situation
when it comes to fundraising. But we see an interest
which is really encouraging, especially from the scientific
and industrial side.
