The Ger­man start-up JeNa­Cell was voted “Sci­ence Start-up of the Year 2017” in Berlin. With its prod­uct, a wound dress­ing based on pure cel­lu­lose, large burn wounds can be treated quickly and pain­lessly for the first time. Unlike con­ven­tional plas­ters, it is a moist, semi-trans­par­ent and fully bio­log­i­cal mate­r­ial that does not stick to the wound. The nanocel­lu­lose cul­ti­vated from bac­te­ria is also used in beauty med­i­cine to smooth wrinkles.

“JeNa­Cell con­vinced the jury with its highly inno­v­a­tive prod­uct, as it is of great impor­tance espe­cially in the med­ical field, Ger­many has about 30,000 burn vic­tims per year, many of them chil­dren. Here, the pain­less and rapid treat­ment with Jenacell’s wound patch rep­re­sents enor­mous progress,” said Dr. Ste­fan von Holtzbrinck, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Holtzbrinck Pub­lish­ing Group and Chair­man of the Falling Walls Ven­ture jury, explain­ing the deci­sion in favour of the start-up from Jena.
A total of 24 sci­ence-based start-ups from around the world were invited to present their busi­ness ideas at Falling Walls Ven­ture in Berlin. The com­pa­nies came from Canada, Ukraine, Saudi Ara­bia, Aus­tria, Great Britain, the USA and Ger­many, among oth­ers. Each com­pany had five min­utes to con­vince the inter­na­tional jurors from busi­ness, acad­e­mia and the media of their busi­ness model.
The 24 Falling Walls Ven­ture final­ists were nom­i­nated by lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties and ven­ture cap­i­tal com­pa­nies: among oth­ers, King Abdul­lah Uni­ver­sity of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­ogy, the Uni­ver­sity of Cam­bridge, Evonik Indus­tries or the Royal Acad­emy of Engi­neer­ing Lon­don send their best sci­ence-based start-up into the race for the title Falling Walls Sci­ence Start-Up 2017. In 2017, both New York Uni­ver­sity and Tohoku Uni­ver­sity in Sendai, Japan, organ­ised a pre­lim­i­nary com­pe­ti­tion and sent their win­ner to Berlin. Falling Walls Ven­ture is an ini­tia­tive of the Falling Walls Foun­da­tion, is sup­ported by Siemens, Boehringer Ingel­heim and Evonik as Global Part­ners and takes place in coop­er­a­tion with numer­ous inter­na­tional part­ner uni­ver­si­ties and research institutions.
For more infor­ma­tion, please visit www.falling-walls.com