With its innovative approach, Dermagnostix addresses a critical need in dermatology. While therapies have become increasingly effective and specific over recent decades, diagnostic methods have remained largely unchanged. Based on these, many skin diseases are hard to differentiate, and resulting errors lead to wrong therapy decisions.
Dermagnostix’ new approach combines novel molecular markers with ground-breaking centrifugal microfluidics technology. Their fully automated ‘lab-in-a-box system’ consists of a CD-shaped plastic disk that contains all analytical reagents and a small analyzer device that rotates the disk at different speeds and temperatures thereby controlling the complex analytical process. It can be conveniently placed and operated in standard dermatology practices or labs enabling the physician to test skin samples for up to 40 markers in just 90 minutes and make informed, personalized therapy decisions.
This technical approach and the exceptionally strong, interdisciplinary founding team have already received several awards and significant pre-seed funding that allowed them to create and validate a prototype analyzer, together with a first disk for the differential diagnosis of psoriasis and eczema. The team is led by dermatologist Natalie Garzorz-Stark as CEO and microfluidics engineer Katharina Dormanns as CTO.
The start-up builds on intellectual property and technology from Helmholtz Munich, Hahn-Schickard Institute in Freiburg and the Klinikum rechts der Isar of the Technical University of Munich. It gained collaborative support from Helmholtz Munich’s innovation management department, Ascenion and the Bayerische Patentallianz GmbH (BayPAT). Both Ascenion and BayPAT, have acquired equity in Dermagnostix.
Revenues Ascenion may receive from the future sale of shares will be mostly distributed to the LifeScience Foundation, which in turn will make them available to its endowing institutes, including Helmholtz Munich, as research grants.
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