Page 6 - SaxoCell Annual Report22/23

Foreword

An eventful, successful and inspiring 2022/23 and thus the first half of SaxoCell's first
funding period is now behind us and we are happy about the many different tasks and
challenges we have already overcome together within the cluster.

Our 12 projects are in the midst of their first implementation phase. We have successfully
spun out one start-up from our project HemRec and our other project xMac has been
rewarded with the Science4Life Venture Cup (Business plan competition). Not only has
there been these exploitation successes, the projects have also produced a lot of
interesting data, some of which is clearly visible in high-ranking publications. The
platforms work closely with the projects to accompany and support them in the best
possible way. Opportunities to get a glimpse of how our projects and platforms are
working were at our consortium meeting in Dresden in June 2022 and at our first
Scientific Advisory Board Meeting in October 2022 at Fraunhofer IZI Leipzig. There was
also an exchange with the other Future Clusters (Clusters4Future) at the BMBF meetings
in Berlin and Bonn in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

The 2022/23 period was accompanied by numerous workshops, lectures and seminars,
which were tailored and led by our Hub team. In addition to workshop series on transfer
and GMP, there were specialized events, such as the Thymus symposium or the Nextflow
workshop from our industry partner ecSeq, as well as popular science lectures on medical
topics related to cell and gene therapies from speakers within the cluster. The Hub's
transfer team was active in positioning projects toward industry goals and scouting for
the next phase, as well as attending a number of partnering conferences with the BIO-
Europe 2022 in Leipzig a key highlight in spreading SaxoCell's mission and attracting new
industry partners. We also enjoyed public relations work with events such as the Long
Night of Science and the "Türen auf mit der Maus" action day, which vividly brought the
future of personalized medicine closer to a broad audience of young and old.
1