The medical technology start-up ColdPlasmaTech has won the German Innovation Award 2018. The spin-off from the Center for Innovation Competence "plasmatis" intends to use the award to drive a new direction in medicine.
The ColdPlasmaTech team, led by founder Carsten Mahrenholz, is no stranger to award ceremonies. The medical technology company has already won more than ten awards in less than five years. But the 2018 German Innovation Award in the “Start-ups” category is something very special for the team from Greifswald. The award recognizes outstanding, forward-looking innovations by German companies that are transforming business and markets through their innovative strength. It is presented by Accenture, Daimler, and EnBW in collaboration with Wirtschaftswoche and is held under the patronage of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.
Against germs and wounds
"ColdPlasmaTech is working to solve 'two major problems facing modern medicine today—or rather, facing society as a whole,'" Carsten Mahrenholz explained at the award ceremony on April 13 in Munich. "On the one hand, there are multidrug-resistant bacteria. The other major problem affects many older people: chronic wounds."
The young Greifswald-based company is developing a wound dressing that treats infections caused by multi-resistant germs and chronic wounds with cold plasma. Cold plasma is an ionized, electrically conductive gas, also known as the fourth state of matter, that reaches only about 40 degrees Celsius. It has a disinfecting effect and at the same time activates the immune system.
An application with the ColdPlasmaTech wound dressing takes only three to five minutes.
ColdPlasmaTech
A new direction in medicine
The high-tech company ColdPlasmaTech is a spin-off of the Leibniz Institute for Plasma Science and Technology (INP) in Greifswald. Since 2008, the Federal Ministry of Research has been funding the Center for Innovation Competence “plasmatis,” which is based at the INP. The ColdPlasmaTech team was able to build its development work on the results of this center. The Federal Ministry of Research is currently funding the startup as part of its Medical Technology program under the funding line “Translating Medical Technology Solutions into Patient Care—Providing Clinical Evidence Without Delay.”
For Carsten Mahrenholz, the German Innovation Award is not just confirmation that he is on the right track: “This is incredibly important for the entire field of plasma medicine,” Mahrenholz said with conviction at the awards ceremony. “We’ve opened up a new direction in medicine, and with the German Innovation Award, we can take it another step forward.”
