BioFluidix GmbH is a micro technology company focused on low volume liquid handling. Our proprietary non-contact technologies are based on micro machined components providing highest quality, throughput and functionality. Our long-standing expertise in working with liquid droplets, jets and sprays in the picoliter to nanoliter range inspired our unique product portfolio which comprises hardware and consumables as well as R&D services. Our leading-edge printing, dispensing and coating solutions enable our customers in life-science research and industrial production to reduce volumes, increase throughput and cut costs. Being a young and innovative company we are dedicated to continuous research and development of our products and performance in order to exceed our customers’ expectations in every respect.

Contact: Wolfgang Streule (wolfgang.streule@remove-this.biofluidix.com)
Website: www.biofluidix.com

Modern trends in medical or industrial microbiology require microbial sensors with response times in the order of minutes from taking a sample. BiosparQ aims at providing such sensors to allow informed intervention and application of feedback loops to control the dynamic behavior of various systems.BiosparQ has developed a 'Single-cell' MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry device which has the capability to analyze mixtures of microbes without the need for time-consuming culturing and isolation steps. As these steps determine the turnaround time, BiosparQ's solution has the potential to transform MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry into a game changer for a wide variety of medical and industrial applications.The key aspect of our technology is its ability to present cells one by one to a MALDI-TOF mass spectrometer. Together with its complementary single-cell data processing algorithms, it transforms streams of single-cell spectra to microbial information. All in just a matter of minutes.
Contact: Gerold de Valk (devalk@remove-this.biosparq.nl)
Website: www.biosparq.nl

PrimaDiag is a company which develops instruments for research and diagnostic laboratories. In particular, PrimaDiag has developped the PrimaRWS system, a modular platform allowing scientists to easily automate their biological processes. PrimaRWS consists of a set of simple and robust robotic bases on which, depending on the users' experimental needs, different tools can ben mounted (pipettes, spectrophotometer, camera, thermostated block, vacumm pump,...).
PrimaDiag contributes to the SICTEC project by bringing its unique know-how, at the interface of robotics and biology. Our company acts both by integrating other partners’ high added value technological bricks on the PrimaRWS system, and by developping additional add-ons aimed at allowing the manipulation of living cells on the Single Cell Manipulator (SCM).

Contact: Guillaume LHERMITE (glhermite@remove-this.primadiag.com)
Website: www.primadiag.com

Innoprot, spin-off from the University of the Basque Country, is a biotechnology company focused on the generation of recombinant cell lines and primary cells intended for use in cell-based drug screening. Our efforts are directed to increase speed and efficiency of "in vitro" assays, allowing the collection of more information about the compounds in less time than other biological systems. The types & formats of our products fit the specific needs of the market, allowing the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies to choose between cell lines for single assays, cell lines for High Content Screening and cell lines for High Throughput Screening.

Contact: Clarisa Salado (csalado@remove-this.innoprot.com)
Website: www.innoprot.com

Sophion Bioscience, headquartered near Copenhagen, Denmark, has the sole focus of providing state of the art products and integrated solutions for automated patch clamping. Sophion develops and sells high throughput patch clamp solutions for functional characterization of living cells. Based on advanced microtechnology, Sophion’s QPatch systems potentially increase patch clamp throughput from 100 up to 1,000 times by a high degree of parallelism and automation. Thus the QPatch combines the accuracy of traditional patch clamp with the high throughput of indirect methods. The QPatch system is currently used in pharmaceutical and biotech companies around the world.

Contact: Sune Hørlück (suh@remove-this.sophion.dk)
Website: www.sophion.dk

The Department of Microsystems Engineering (IMTEK), University of Freiburg, is the principal technology partner and project coordinator. It has grown to become one of the world’s largest academic institutions in the field of microsystems engineering. With 20 professors and over 300 research and technical staff, its scientific scope encompasses nearly all technical fields relevant to the highly interdisciplinary world of microsystems technology. It has years of experience striking new paths with researchers and developers from other fields. The Laboratory for MEMS Applications is an expert on micro- and nanofluidics, especially on nanoliter and picoliter liquid handling: With its contact-free dispensing technologies fluids in very small doses with high precision can be dispensed. They are even able to cope with delicate media such as dissolved particles or living cells and guarantee high throughput.

Contact: André Groß (andre.gross@remove-this.imtek.uni-freiburg.de)
Website: www.imtek.de/professuren/anwendungsentwicklung

The department of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at the Erasmus MC Rotterdam, The Netherlands with 120 employees, provides microbiological diagnostics, infection prevention control and consultancy for a 1320-bed university medical centre. The Erasmus Medical Center is a combination of a pediatric, oncology and university hospital. Diagnostics for bacteria, fungi and parasites is based on conventional (culture, microscopy and serology) and molecular-based nucleic acid amplification techniques. On an annual basis over 200,000 clinical samples (data from 2010) have been processed in the diagnostic laboratory. For that reason, diverse robots are used to speed up the throughput. The medical staff consists of clinical microbiologists, infectious diseases specialists and are supported by medical biologists and medical molecular microbiologists.
A unit Research and Development in the department focuses on drug development, antimicrobial resistance (mechanisms), antibiotic dynamics in experimental animal models, host-pathogen interaction, development of microbial typing platforms (e.g. MALDI -TOF, Raman spectroscopy), and innovation in diagnostic platforms. The laboratory had several decades of experience in testing and validation of new diagnostic platforms, such as SICTEC. The main role of the Erasmus Medical Center in the project is therefore to provide clinical validation and consulting to the project partners that target IVD applications with their products and to help them to prepare for CE IVE labelling.
René te Witt, medical molecular microbiologist, is senior scientist at the unit R&D of the MMI department and is responsible for the development of new diagnostic strategies for the identification and characterization of bacterial isolates on respectively the species and the strain level.

Contact: René te Witt (r.tewitt@remove-this.erasmusmc.nl)
Website: www.erasmusmc.nl

Dr.-Ing. Wolfgang Streule
BioFluidiX GmbH
Georges-Koehler-Allee 103
79110 Freiburg, Germany 

Telephone: +49 761 458938-51
Fax: +49 761 458938-99