Start-up built deep-tech product in easy access labs

Biotechnology start-ups always need labs, but they can hardly ever afford them. In Copenhagen, one solution to this challenge is to get bench-space at the low-cost easy-access lab CPH-labs owned and operated by Innovation District Copenhagen-partner Symbion. The start-up Immunordic took advantage of this opportunity to develop their fast alternative to antibodies for research, diagnostics and drug-development. By Jes Andersen.

Saving time by taking Llamas out of the process

Antibodies are what our bodies use to identify and combat disease-causing organisms and toxins, so they are highly sought after in biological and pharmaceutical research. A specific type called nanobodies are smaller in size and particularly interesting for cancer research. Until now these have been extremely time-consuming to obtain. In order to identify a novel nanobody for just one disease, you would inoculate a llama, wait six to twelve months and then extract its blood and isolate the nanobody. Immunordic is cutting that time to just 30 days with a proprietary technology.

We wanted to make nanobodies available to anyone who might need them in their research. If more people work with nanobodies, chances are that more will succeed with discovering unknown aspects of the immune system, figuring out new ways to diagnose disease and inventing new treatments”: Emil Arvedsen, partner and co-founder, Immunordic.

A service for the co-founders’ younger self

Immunordic is very much based on Arvedsen’s own struggles as a PhD student. He studied brain physiology at Innovation District Copenhagen-partner University of Copenhagen and wanted to activate brain cells using nanobodies. These turned out to be next to impossible to obtain.

I went to the US to get my nanobodies made there, and still it turned out to be too expensive and time-consuming for my project. You could say that I am trying to help my PhD-student-self with this company”: Emil Arvedsen, partner and co-founder, Immunordic.

Proof of concept achieved

Recently, Immunordic succeeded in making proof of concept for their product. They have shown that their technology allows them to identify a tailored nanobody in under a month. The next big step is to show that they can produce one for any disease or toxin. For this, they are building a library of billions of mutated nanobodies.

When we started working on this, we thought we would nail it in under a year. We have gone through eight iterations and two years of work, but now we are finally confident that we’ve got it. When you are a scientist, you need to fail a lot of times before you succeed. When you are a start-up, you need to succeed a lot of times before you can start selling your solution as a product”: Jannik Faliu, partner and co-founder, Immunordic.

Moving from shared labs to own labs

Faliu’s and Arvedsen’s company now has four full time employees and is sufficiently mature, that they have taken an office with their own labs. They are still staying in Symbion though. They want to keep a close connection with the other early-stage biotech start-ups they met while working in CPH Labs.

We have experienced an environment of extreme helpfulness. The lab has its own instruments but many of the companies own advanced instruments that they are happy to lend out. We have also had very open, highly detailed and frankly quite geeky discussions with people working to create their own companies”: Jannik Faliu, partner and co-founder, Immunordic.

Moving from bespoke to automated

Right now, Immunordic’s solution is highly bespoke. In the near future the founders hope to give customers their pick of around 100 billion nanobodies in an automated on-line ordering system. This will be the decisive step towards fulfilling their dream of making nanobodies available to anybody that need them.

Innovation District Copenhagen is working towards becoming one of the best places in the world to launch or scale your innovative company. Especially within life science and quantum technology. Seeing a local start-up building enabling technology for life science research and development is highly gratifying. I am sure that companies like Immunordic will prove valuable to our innovation district mission”: David Dreyer Lassen, Chair, Innovation District Copenhagen Development Council and prorector for innovation, University of Copenhagen.