We are science visionaries who want to end cancer’s reign.
Vision and Mission
We are revolutionizing drug discovery and development. With our unique AI-powered platform, next-generation cancer drug candidates can be developed into biotherapeutics with enhanced safety and superior efficacy - quickly and for all patients. Our platform is the new foundation for the pharmaceutical industry to produce next-generation biotherapeutics with a lasting and unprecedented therapeutic impact.
Approximately 10 million lives are lost to cancer annually. This makes it the second leading cause of death globally. Therapeutic process is happening – but is excruciatingly slow. The potential for developing novel, more powerful biotherapeutics is exhausted with conventional methods. This is about to change with our unique AI-driven drug discovery and development platform. We at BioCopy are overcoming the decisive hurdles of truly effective cancer treatment:
- An extremely difficult, tedious, and costly discovery and development process
- Problems in the transition from early-stage discovery and development towards industrial-scale production with a high rate of failure
- A relevant risk that biotherapeutics not only kill cancer cells but also damage healthy cells, which can lead to life-threatening side effects.
We are cancer’s nemesis
It seems that cancer is always ahead of medicine, that it is too fast and outsmarts human biology. This is not true. The body‘s own immune system is highly efficient in fighting cancer cells. However, cancer cells are extremely adept at evading our body’s immune surveillance. This is why special drugs are needed, which enable our immune cells to chase tumor cells, so that they can fully unleash their cancer-fighting power. The drugs achieve this by recognizing cancer cells and directly linking them to an immune cell. They are highly complex biotherapeutics.
As a consequence, the drug discovery and development of such biotherapeutics is tedious, costly and error-prone. In addition, the way current biotherapeutics recognize cancer cells is far from perfect. This goes hand in hand with a high risk, that current biotherapeutics might damage healthy cells, leading to life-threatening side effects.
This is where BioCopy comes into play. We are the world’s first research-based biotechnology company with an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven, end-to-end automated, proprietary platform. We discover and develop highly powerful yet safe drug candidates for future biotherapeutics at an unprecedented speed, quality, and quantity. They identify cancer cells more accurately than ever before, making them safer and more efficient than conventionally-developed drugs. This unleashes the immune system’s power on a scale that has never been seen before.
The success rates of our candidates are substantially higher compared to current approaches in the pharmaceutical market. This is highly attractive to pharmaceutical companies.
We have three programs underway in solid tumors (bladder cancer, ovarian cancer, lung cancer), starting in 2024/2025 and two in blood cancer (acute myeloid lymphoma), beginning in 2025/2026. Our plan for the next three to four years: Provide drug candidates for clinical evaluation from all five of these programs.
Powerful drug candidates beyond cancer
One of BioCopy’s key advantages is that our platform is not limited to cancer biotherapeutics. Its broad applicability comes with the huge potential of providing powerful drug candidates for other severe diseases as well. Our longer-term goal is to discover and develop next-generation biotherapeutics for immunological and neurological disorders.
Recent History
With the acquisition of Perspix Biotech and with it the mastermind behind the end-to-end automation of drug candidate development, we have taken a huge step towards our goal of ending cancer’s reign.
BioCopy was founded in 2019. Our technology was quickly recognized as leading-edge in early drug discovery, drug candidate safety and efficacy assessments. When we joined forces with Perspix BioTech and their automated laboratory in early 2024, we took drug discovery and development to a completely new level.
Not only did we solve current obstacles in optimization and development of complex biotherapeutic candidates, we now have an AI-driven, end-to-end automated platform, that enables development of highly efficient, safe, and multispecific biotherapeutics – similar to a Swiss army knife – at an unprecedented speed. The platform allows design and development of an unlimited number of biotherapeutics mimicking industrial production processes. This makes BioCopy a key partner for pharmaceutical industries, when it comes to bringing next-generation biotherapeutics to market.
The acquisition of Perspix Biotech marks a milestone for BioCopy on our mission to end cancer’s reign. It is the latest in a series of important acquisitions we have made in recent years. With these we have optimally aligned our business towards developing highly effecive and safe cancer drug candidates.
Leadership Team
Dr. Matthias Wiedenfels
Chief Executive Officer
- Senior executive with 20+ years of experience in the pharma industry
- Former CEO of STADA Arzneimittel AG
- Successful driver of enterprise and shareholder value
Dr. Günter Roth
Chief Innovation Officer
- Founder of BioCopy
- Passionate researcher with 20 years of academic biophysics background
- Inventor of the precision screening technology
Dr. Jörg Birkenfeld
Chief Scientific Officer
- Molecular biologist with 20+ years in pharma and biotech R&D
- Former head of Sanofi’s High throughput biological drug engineering division
- Pioneer in antibody engineering and automation
Quinton Holland
Chief Financial Officer
- Financial expert and chartered accountant
- Extensive experience across media, biotech, AI, audit and banking sectors
- Expertise in M&A, PE, transformation, blue chips and financial stewardship
Board/Advisory Team
Dr. Rainer Böhm
Former CEO of Novartis, non-executive Board Member
Rainer Böhm was a key figure in the development of Novartis Oncology in Europe and the US. He acted as CEO of Novartis Pharma AG.
Prof. Dr. Alexander v. Gabain
Serial Entrepreneur and Scientist, non-executive Board Member
Alexander v. Gabain is the founder of numerous biotech companies. He acts as chairman of the board of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT).
Niko Bausch
Co-founder of BioCopy
Niko Bausch founded BioCopy together with Günter Roth. He is a biologist by education and a financial expert.
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Hartmut Michel
Nobel Prize Laureate, Advisory Board
Hartmut Michel was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He is a structural biology expert and served as director of the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics.
Prof. Dr. Roland Kontermann
University of Stuttgart, Advisory Board
Roland Kontermann is a recognized expert in the field of antibody engineering and has extensive expertise in bi-specific constructs, such as T-cell engagers.
Dr. Martin Klatt
Charité Berlin, Advisory Board
Martin Klatt is a medical doctor and oncologist. He assists BioCopy in evaluating the medical needs for BioCopy's pipeline molecules.
Prof. Dr. Sebastian Springer
Jacobs University Bremen, Advisory Board
Expert in stabilised HLAs and HLAs in general. Professor Springer advises BioCopy on the production and handling of pHLA.
Dr. Annemarie Honegger
Retired, Zürich University, Advisory Board
Expert in crystallography, molecular modelling and phage display libraries. Dr Honegger advises BioCopy on the development and optimisation of our proprietary phage display technology, which is used to find specific therapeutic antibodies against our pHLA targets.
Dr. David Myszka
Director Biosensor Tools LLC, Advisory Board
Expert for SPR measurement and the development of applications and analysis tools for label-free biosensors. Dr Myszka advises Biocopy on the evaluation and interpretation of the high-throughput binding data we generate with our platform technology.
News/Press/Events
2024-04-09
Game Changer in Fighting Cancer: BioCopy expands corporate portfolio with acquisition of Perspix Biotech GmbH. >> read more >> lesen Sie mehr
2022-12-05
BioCopy patent for complex array fabrication process granted much earlier than usual: setting new standards in the state of the art for kinetic binding measurement. >> read more
2022-03-29
BioCopy AG presents ValidaTe, a novel ultra-fast screening technology to significantly speed up drug discovery. >> read more
Awards/Publications
Awards
- Forbes Magazine listed BioCopy in 2021 as one of the 30 Spin-offs to watch (https://www.forbes.at/artikel/spin-offs-to-watch-2021.html)
- The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Emerging Technologies of London lists the BioCopy concepts “AptaSWIFT” and “immune2day” in the TOP 10 of Health technologies in 2015 (during early spin-off phase)
Selected Publications
- Kraemer S et al., An ultra-high-throughput screen for the evaluation of peptide HLA-Binder interactions; Sci Rep. 2023; 13 (1): 5290; doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-32384-z.
- Ziegengeist T et al., High-Throughput and Format-agnostic Mispairing Assay for Multispecific Antibodies using Intact Mass Spectrometry. Anal Chem 2023; 95 (27); doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.3c00742.
- An end-to-end automated platform process for high-throughput engineering of next-generation multi-specific antibody therapeutics. MAbs. 2021; 13 (1):1955433; doi: 10.1080/19420862.2021.1955433.