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 around founder Carsten Mahrenholz knows all about award ceremonies. The medical technology company has already won more than ten awards in less than five years. But the German Innovation Award 2018 in the category "Start-ups" is something very special for the team from Greifswald. The award recognizes outstanding, forward-looking innovations by German companies that are changing business and markets with their innovative strength. It is awarded by Accenture, Daimler and EnBW together with Wirtschaftswoche and is under the patronage of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.
Against germs and wounds
ColdPlasmaTech is working to solve "two major problems that our medicine has today - actually, societies have these problems," Carsten Mahrenholz explained at the award ceremony in Munich on April 13. "On the one hand, there are the multiresistant germs. The other big problem affects many older people: that of 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 German Federal Ministry of Education and Research has been funding the Center for Innovation Competence plasmatis, which is located at INP. The ColdPlasmaTech team was able to build its development work on the results of this center. Currently, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research is funding the start-up as part of its medical technology program in the funding line "Transferring medical technology solutions into patient care - proving 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 plasma medicine as a whole," Mahrenholz expressed his conviction at the award ceremony. "We have a new direction in medicine, and we can take it another step forward with the German Innovation Award."
