biocyc is the first biotech company to build a new building in the PSP
Antibodies for cancer diagnosis | The company biocyc is the first biotech company to build a new production building in the Potsdam Science Park – and will open in October. If you walk from Golm station to the Potsdam Science Park, you will notice a white cube with light gray ribbon windows. The building is the first new building of an owner-managed biotechnology company on the site: the company biocyc, which manufactures drugs for cancer diagnosis.
The four-storey building is located in the immediate vicinity of GO:IN, where start-up founders come and go in addition to the site management of the Potsdam Science Park.
Alexander Gorczyza, Managing Director of the family-owned company biocyc, has always kept an eye on his rooms and thus the construction progress here. The move is scheduled for October – a stone’s throw from a spatial point of view, but “a great challenge to manage such a project,” notes Gorczyza. The 39-year-old is thus expanding the operating area to around 1600 square meters. And the number of currently 20 employees will also increase in the future.
The new building of biocyc
In 1997, his parents founded biocyc in Luckenwalde in order to synthetically produce proteins themselves, which they initially sold to pharmaceutical companies. With success: the company later opened a second location in Potsdam-Golm. When the company was finally bursting at the seams, some major orders helped the family to finance the new building, which draws 70 percent of its heat from geothermal energy and can be expanded to the rear. The company also received support from the Brandenburg Economic Development Corporation (WFBB). The supply wing on the ground floor leads to an office and two further laboratory floors. There, biocyc produces something special: monoclonal, tailor-made antibodies from rabbit blood.
Europe’s only manufacturer of rabbit monoclonal antibodies for cancer diagnostics
“The standard worldwide is to obtain antibodies from mice,” explains biotechnologist Gorczyza. However, the rabbit’s immune system is much more complex than that of the mouse, which allows antibodies to be formed against structures that would be invisible to the mouse’s immune system. Antibodies from the rabbit thus contribute to significantly better cancer diagnosis. Four years ago, he and his team had sufficiently developed the technology, for which the animal’s blood was only needed once.
The antibodies are in demand. For example, if someone has a conspicuous mole examined by a dermatologist, a tissue sample is taken, poured into paraffin in pathology and cut into wafer-thin slices. “The antibody that we have developed is applied to these in the laboratory. Under the microscope, depending on the staining, you can see whether the tissue is benign or malignant,” says Gorczyza. “We are the only manufacturer of monoclonal rabbit-A in Europe”.
The choice of location was not accidental.
The choice of location was not accidental. “Because it is crucial for us as a biotech company to build networks, to push symbioses and collaborations with other companies,” he decided on Potsdam-Golm, says Gorczyza. “The Potsdam Science Park offers many opportunities here with the University of Potsdam, the Max Planck and Fraunhofer Institutes.” The good transport connections are also a plus: “It only takes 26 minutes from BER Airport to Golm train station.”
Agnes von Matuschka is also pleased with the new building: “We have been working with the state capital for years to create space for companies to settle here,” says the managing director of site management at the Potsdam Science Park. The new building of biocyc is an important signal: “It is great that a strong family business has now decided in favor of the location in the long term with the investment in land, buildings and employees.”
Text: Isabel Fannrich | Dieser Artikel ist am 8. September 2023 in der Sonderbeilage “WISSENSCHAFT IM ZENTRUM” von proWissen Potsdam e.V. in Potsdamer Neuste Nachrichten/Tagesspiegel erschienen.
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