Interview winners HHU ideas competition

The Center for Entrepreneurship (CEDUS) organized the HHU Idea Competition and awarded University teams for innovative business ideas. In the category “students” the first prize was awarded to three students of the new study program Quantitative Biology, a joint degree programme betweenn HHU and UzK and supported by CEPLAS. The team led by Isabella Rotthäuser, Ria Choi and Sabrina Kemeny has developed the test procedure "FastFungiFinder". In an interview they speak about thier winning idea and what the future hold for their project.

Congratulations on winning the HHU ideas competition this year. Can you tell us more about your winning idea – FastFungiFinder?

First of all, thank you very much. A major problem which is receiving inadequate attention than much needed, is the extent of suffering the patients may experience from late or wrong diagnosis of fungal infections, addressing the fact that there are around 1.5 million patients dying every year from this exact cause. Noticing thereby a big need for reliable fast testing, our team was interested in developing a tool that could improve the diagnosis of fungal infections.

Our proposed diagnostic format is a simple lateral flow test system, known from the covid fast test kits, with the difference of taking blood as a medium. Within the blood we want to test for a mycotoxin, the benefit of this is that fungal infections can be detected in short amount of time; there is no need for the production of an immune response by the body and no need for the cells of the fungi to spread throughout the body first, which are the criterias mostly needed for other test following similar principles as we are. Further, the specific mycotoxin is suspected to act as a virulence factor meaning its production is only initiated upon actual infection; false positives due to non–pathogenic fungi are avoided.

The mycotoxin we decided for is most prominently produced by the species Aspergillus fumigatus, thus enabling diagnostics for aspergillosis. Moreover, we as well believe that those tests, once established, could easily be adapted to other fungal species, also new ones that might arise to infect humans. This surely leaves room for further growth, improvement and development within the future.

"Through partaking in the competition and being awarded first place, we definitely recognized that anything is worth a try, because the potential is unknown."

Why did you decide to enter the competition, who/what motivated your decision?

We had the opportunity to develop our idea in the beginning in the scope of a project initiated in the course of Microbial Ecology, a course held in Köln University as part of the curriculum for Quantitative Biology (QuantBio), of which all three members of the team are enrolled in.

We were asked to come up with an innovative idea using a microbe that has a potential to become a business concept, and with one of our teammates especially interested in fungi, of which is also a microbe, we concluded on this exciting idea. It was to our surprise then that there was an ongoing registration for a HHU-Ideenwettbewerb at that time that was open for any students of interest with an idea. Through partaking in the competition and being awarded first place, we definitely recognized that anything is worth a try, because the potential is unknown.

"It is definitely safe to say that without this program our idea never came to life, since, as already mentioned, it was originally developed for one of our courses."

In what ways was the study program Quantitative Biology instrumental in helping you prepare for this innovative business idea?

It is definitely safe to say that without this program our idea never came to life, since, as already mentioned, it was originally developed for one of our courses. Throughout the course of Microbial Ecology, we were able to gain more insights into microbial principles that helped us to understand the research papers and specify our project.

Additionally, the constant feedback we received during the project from our professors, Prof. Dr. BartThomma and Prof. Dr. Filipe Cabreiro, was very helpful as well and we are quite thankful for that. However, the foregoing courses, namely - “Network of life” for getting to know about fungi and their threats, “Metabolism” to understand chemical principles and secretion of mycotoxins and “Biotechnology” in order to discover the ways of medical diagnostic possibilities - were useful, and our development of the idea would not have been possible without them. Within ongoing research we will probably further rely on our knowledge gained within this course which hopefully benefits us to obtain optimal results.

"We are motivated and excited to know how much our idea can proceed forward."

What does the future hold for your FastFungiFinder project and, of course, for you professionally? Have you thought about what to do after your Bachelor's degree in QuantBio?

Our team is interested to learn the possible ways we could develop this idea into making it reality, based on the theoretical concepts that are readily established. We have reached out to various professionals in events like the ideas competition and Digital Demo Day 2023 to acquire opportunities in receiving contextual support and financial support as in like a Stipendium. We would continuously make efforts into building connections with fellow scientists and advisers, to acquire advanced scientific basis and feedback. Our next main focus also lies in discovering the credibility of our idea based on laboratory experiments, of which needs to take place with suited support, and then thereby further enter into the field of business. We are motivated and excited to know how much our idea can proceed forward.