Ovo Labs GmbH honoured with Max Planck Start-Up Prize of the Stifterverband
At the award ceremony in Frankfurt (from left to right): Michael Kaschke, President of the Stifterverband; Dorothee Bär, Federal Minister for Research, Technology and Aerospace; award winners Agata Zielinska, Melina Schuh, and Oleksandr Yagensky of Ovo Labs; Claudia Felser, Vice President of the MPG and Chair of the Jury; and Patrick Cramer.
Even the venue was extraordinary: the former central administration building of I.G. Farben, which at the time of its construction in the late 1920s was one of the largest and most modern office buildings of its era. It subsequently served as US Armed Forces headquarters until the 1990s, and today forms the heart of Goethe University’s Westend Campus. With the support of Goethe University, the Max Planck Society was able to hold the presentation of the Max Planck Start-Up Prize of the Stifterverband in this striking and historically resonant building. More precisely: in the Eisenhower Rotunda, which in everyday life serves as the university cafeteria, and which offered a unique setting for recognising an outstanding start-up.
A focus on technology transfer
In his speech, Max Planck President Patrick Cramer drew on the significance of the venue, noting that “the history of the Basic Law had its beginnings here. On 1 July 1948, the eleven Minister Presidents of the West German federal states received from the Western Allied powers the historic mandate to convene a constituent assembly for the Federal Republic of Germany.”
The President used this historical context to bridge to the topic of democracy, which he noted requires an economic foundation – and this, in turn, cannot exist without science. This brought Cramer to the central theme of the evening: technology transfer. During the award ceremony, the Max Planck President also set a clear target, stating that the MPG aims to provide even stronger support for start-ups originating from Max Planck Institutes (MPIs), with the goal of launching 20 spin-offs every year by 2030.
Dorothee Bär, the Federal Minister for Research, Technology and Aerospace, spoke in the sun-filled rotunda of her delight at the “enlightened minds in science”. She argued that for Germany to develop from a leading research nation into a leading technology nation, the MPG needed to be operating at its peak. She also extended her congratulations to the winning team: “The Ovo Labs team exemplifies precisely what we want to unlock with the High-Tech Agenda Germany: successful transfer, value creation, and progress in biotechnology and women’s health emerging from the excellent, well-funded basic research of the Max Planck Society.”
Help for women facing involuntary childlessness
For many couples, the desire to have children remains unfulfilled despite the burden of costly and demanding fertility treatments. Why do so many egg cells fail? This question lay at the heart of nearly a decade of research at the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences in Göttingen.
There, Melina Schuh, Director at the Göttingen Institute, and her team developed methods for observing living human egg cells in detail, something that had for a long time been entirely impossible. This enabled them to elucidate the mechanisms underlying defective egg cells, as well as to identify approaches for reducing such errors. The research team has since evolved into a start-up.
“The story of Ovo Labs is the story of how insights from the laboratory are translated into concrete applications. The Max Planck Start-Up Prize of the Stifterverband recognises this transfer. It honours the collaboration between science and industry that is necessary to bring groundbreaking ideas into practice,” said Claudia Felser, Vice President of the Max Planck Society and Chair of the Jury-
Before the panel discussion, which was moderated by science journalist Pia Heinemann, Ovo Labs founders Melina Schuh, Agata Zielinska, and Oleksandr Yagensky presented a short film explaining their research and their path towards more stable chromosomes in egg cells.
Prior to the award ceremony itself, members of the MPG with an interest in founding companies came together for the first time at the Innovation Round Tables, organised by Max Planck Innovation. Researchers, prospective founders, and early-stage start-up teams met with innovators, industry specialists, and investors with wide-ranging technical and business expertise. The intensive conversations facilitated a valuable exchange and provided an excellent opportunity to build and strengthen networks.
