Dr Kathrin Brenker, founder of the start-up opto biolabs, is an optogeneticist. During her doctorate at the Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg, she repeatedly struggled with the chronic lack of suitable illumination devices for optogenetics research. She had to answer many questions herself and work out solutions on her own. A problem that researchers in this field have to deal with on a daily basis, as she found out: every laboratory worldwide had to go through this lengthy process of light titration and improvisation of the light source. Could it not be possible to develop intelligent lighting devices for optogenetic research?
Dr Kathrin Brenker received an EXIST start-up grant in 2018, won the CyberOne Hightech Award Baden-Württemberg in the same year and was given a big stage at a TEDx event. Further start-up prizes followed. Major progress was made in 2020 when Günter Bissinger Medizintechnik GmbH, an innovative, medium-sized company from the region, acquired a stake in opto biolabs. This investment enabled product development to take a huge leap forward, which in turn paved the way for early-stage funding from the state of Baden-Württemberg.
Today, opto biolabs is on the market with its first product optoWELL and is based in its own offices in the Freiburg Innovation Centre (FRIZ) - an excellent, inspiring environment that the founders greatly appreciate. With their products, they want to set standards for optogenetic lighting and experiments, network research and make optogenetics more accessible to smaller laboratories.
