2nd Prize BIOPOLYMER Award 2023

Green Elephant Biotech GmbH (Deutschland)

Innovation: CellScrew® Bioreaktoren

CellScrew® is a novel bioreactor for propagating adherent (i.e., surface-growing) cell cultures. This innovation not only significantly increases the efficiency of producing living tissue for applications such as gene and cell therapies or cosmetic and drug research, but also enables Green Elephant customers to reduce their carbon footprint for disposable laboratory materials by up to 90 percent!

Jury statement

In addition to producing life-saving cells that are essential for research, laboratories around the globe now also produce around ten million tons of plastic waste per year, and the trend is rapidly rising. The team led by Green Elephant founders Felix Wollenhaupt and Joel Eichmann is now countering this trend with their revolutionary technology, CellScrew®. Unlike the cell culture flasks previously made primarily from petroleum-based polystyrene, CellScrew® is made from entirely biobased PLA (polylactide). Furthermore, one CellScrew® system replaces up to 450 conventional cell culture flasks. This is made possible by an ingenious design that also radically simplifies handling in the laboratory: An Archimedean screw in the flask, in conjunction with concentric cylinders on rolling storage, not only ensures continuous transport of the cell culture medium but also creates a huge internal surface compared to previous systems – while using 80 percent less material.

The jury was particularly impressed by the consistency with which the Giessen-based startup founders, who changed careers and became plastics processors, are utilizing the material's advantages. This includes PLA's high biocompatibility, as well as the fact that the material lends itself excellently to 3D printing. And since CellScrew® is incinerated after single use like conventional cell culture flasks for sterility reasons, rather than recycled or composted, the bio-based material offers another advantage: Unlike fossil materials, the process releases barely more greenhouse gas than the plants used as raw materials previously removed from our current atmosphere.

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