Tuesday, April 25th

Protect Your Ideas – From Patenting to Launching a Company in Life Science

Felipe Macias (Head of Entrepreneurship-Center at Goethe Unibator[1]) and Timo Smit (Licensing & IP-Management) from INNOVECTIS[2].

One of the most rewarding experiences in a scientist's life is when you make an exciting discovery. This talk will provide an overview of the procedures for protecting your ideas and realizing their full potential.

Intellectual property (IP), and patenting in the field of life science are crucial steps for building a successful start-up. In this talk, the presenters will highlight how technology transfer via INNOVECTIS enables scientists to secure their IP rights and commercialize their research, fostering both economic growth and societal benefits. Underpinned with examples, the journey from ideas towards attracting investors and the ultimate goal of gaining a competitive advantage in the marketplace, which is offered by Goethe Unibator's program, are discussed.

This talk aims at students interested in pursuing a career in life sciences, who consider to make an important connection between their scientific expertise and an entrepreneurship as well as people with great ideas at any career stage. Furthermore the talk presents Goethe Unibator's activities in supporting founders from the idea to successful market launch.

Invited by Prof. Boles

Die Vorträge des Instituts finden jeweils am Dienstag um 17:15 Uhr im Biozentrum, Campus Riedberg, Gebäude N260 Raum 3.13 statt.
The lectures of the institute take place on Tuesday at 17:15 in the Biozentrum, Campus Riedberg, Building N260 Room 3.13.

[1] Goethe Unibator is part of INNOVECTIS and connects research and commercialization with the aim of promoting entrepreneurial thinking and action at Goethe University.

Tuesday, February 21, 2023

Leverage a Large Actinobacterial Strain Collection for Natural Products and Drug Discovery

Prof. Ben Shen, University of Florida, USA

The Natural Products Discovery Center (NPDC) at UF Scripps houses one of the world's largest actinobacterial strain collections, totaling ~125,000 strains.  These strains, isolated over the last eight decades and from 69 different countries, encode natural product chemical and biological diversity that are impossible to reproduce in laboratory settings today.  We have launched a large-scale genome sequencing campaign to sequence all actinobacterial strains in the collection.  The sequenced genomes are curated to create the NPGRC database.  Both the strains and the curated genomes have been made available to the scientific community to promote natural products training, research, and associated applications (https://npdc.rc.ufl.edu/home).  Lessons learned from our natural products program over the years and preliminary analysis of the strains sequenced to date, benchmarking against the sequenced genomes available in the public databases, will be presented to highlight how such a community resource could radically transform the current paradigm of natural product studies and drug discovery.

How to get there:

Open Street Map, Google Maps, pdf