The motivation to establish the spin-off came in the middle of last year from the Bio-electromagnetism (BioEM) team of FBMI, which was founded by prof. Jan Vrba, prof. David Vrba, doc. Ondřej Fišer, Dr. Marek Novák and Dr. Tomáš Dřížďal.
The first upcoming product of Tonagena s.r.o., currently in the final stage of testing, is an electroporation system for 2D adherent tissue cultures, which enables reversible and irreversible electroporation of cell cultures.
Electroporation is a method used in medicine and industry to create microscopic pores in cell membranes when cells are exposed to a high intensity pulsed electric field. The pores formed during electroporation increase the permeability of the cell membrane. This can be used to destroy the cell itself, which can serve as an effective therapy for treating cardiac arrhythmias or tumours (irreversible electroporation). Large chemical molecules used as chemotherapeutics can also be transported through these pores into cancer cells or genes can be transported to genetically manipulate the cell, opening up the possibility of gene therapy (reversible electroporation).
"The developed system enables a new approach to perform gene transfection directly in culture plates, which are a natural environment for tissue culture, unlike the previously established cuvette-based systems. Moreover, the system can be used to study the mechanism of induction of cell death during irreversible electroporation, which is already widely used in clinical practice," adds doc. Ondřej Fišer.
The development and research of electroporation is carried out in collaboration with the Institute of Biochemistry, Cell and Molecular Biology of the 3rd Faculty of Medicine of Charles University and the Cardiology Clinic of the Královské Vinohrady University Hospital.
Dr. Jan Urban from the Department of Technology Transfer and Fundraising explains the path behind the successful establishment of the company, "The Tonagena team combines strong scientific erudition with the commercial ability to translate the outputs of their research into a product with clear benefits for an existing group of customers, which is why we were happy to support the team in the creation of their university spin-off."