Countdown to SLAS Europe 2025: Nanoworx BV

“From  the 12 start-ups and emerging technology companies that have been selected for SLAS Europe 2025 Innovation AveNEW, SLAS will select the finalists for the €5,000 SLAS Ignite Award, which recognises the most innovative start-up in the field of laboratory automation and drug screening”, said , Jill Hronek, SLAS Director of Marketing and Communications. Start-ups with a product that has been on the market for less than six months also have the opportunity to participate in  the SLAS New Product Award. The award recognises innovations that promise to revolutionise drug screening.

Following Acoustofab Ltd (London, UK), European Biotechnology Magazine will give an update of Nanoworx BV, an Eindhoven University of Technology spin-out in the field of nanomedicine.

Although the field of nanomedicine was established more than 50 years ago, its actual benefits have only recently emerged. The clinical translation of innovative nanomedicines from academic concepts to real-life products that benefit patients is still hampered by a know-how & manufacturability gap. This is where Nanoworx with its state-of-the-art knowledge and equipment infrastructure comes into play. For long, the Eindhoven University of Technology has been a European hotspot for nanomedicine development. However, it lasted until August 2024 until Nanoworx BV was co-founded by three experts with diverse backgrounds that feel determined to close the gap by taking a nanomedicine from a proof-of-concept to an optimised product through high-throughput library production and  screening.

Nanoworx is funded through the PharmaNL Shared Development Infrastructure pogramme. Projects in this programme are aimed to establish infrastructure provisions for groundbreaking pharmaceutical products and drug development technologies.

According to Willem Mulder the driving force behind Nanoworx – together with CEO Peter Hendriks & COO Anna-Maria Makri-Pistikou – “thanks to this grant, we can establish a sustainable infrastructure in five years. Our goal is for Nanoworx to operate completely independently after the PharmaNL subsidy ends. Nanomedicines have been developed since the 1980s, but significant breakthroughs are still lacking. This is because large nanoparticle libraries for large-scale screening are not available. With the automation of production, we aim to solve that problem,” Mulder added.

As a CRO, the company targets biotech firms, research groups, and academic consortia, offering support at every step of the process—from development and screening to optimization and scaling up of innovative nanomedicines. “This particularly offers smaller companies the chance to utilise automated manufacturing, technology typically available to major players” says Mulder. “Nanoworx fills that void.”

Nanoworx’s ambitions extend beyond the Netherlands. “Initially, we focus on the Netherlands, but our goal is to ultimately expand internationally, particularly to Europe and North America,” Mulder explains.