This year several researchers at Freie Universität have taken their exciting innovations down the path to develop them into everyday products: an app against schizophrenia, live vaccines against intestinal parasites, healthy feed for edible insects – to name a few. These projects have received support from various sources that help researchers transfer their findings to the market, such as Berlin’s Science & Start-Ups or the GO-BIO initial funding program through Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

One project stood out: Daniel Lauster’s idea for an antiviral protective shield to be sprayed into a person’s nose was funded with more than 4.5 million euros by the German Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation (SPRIN-D). In October the resulting spin-off MucosaTec GmbH also won the final round of the SPRIN-D competition in the category “Broad Spectrum Antivirals.”