Klaus Wagenbauer among the "Top 40 under 40"

Physicist and entrepreneur Dr. Klaus Wagenbauer is among this year’s "Top 40 under 40" of the magazine "Capital", which has been selecting young talents since 2007. He studied and earned his doctorate at the Technical University of Munich (TUM); in 2022, he founded the spin-off Plectonic Biotech together with other TUM researchers. Plectonic is working on developing highly specific immunotherapies using DNA nanotechnology.

The team aims to develop immunotherapies for cancer that are highly specific and therefore cause as few side effects as possible. To this end, they have developed an "on/off switch". On one side, it docks to tumor cells, on the other side, it activates antibodies once a tumor cell has been identified and bound. The switch consists of DNA, which is used as a nano-sized building material. Using DNA origami technology, to which the Chair of Biomolecular Nanotechnology at TUM has made important contributions, the team can specifically design the tiny platforms and equip them with various antibodies.

Klaus Wagenbauer has been working on further developing DNA nanotechnology since his doctorate at TUM. Since 2019, he has been focusing on how the technology can be applied to immunotherapy and has founded the spin-off Plectonic Biotech in 2022 together with TUM alumni Dr. Benjamin Kick and Dr. Jonas Funke, as well as Hendrik Dietz, Professor of Biomolecular Nanotechnology at TUM. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the Munich Institute of Biomedical Engineering (MIBE) at TUM, where the team significantly advanced the technology. Since August 2023, he has been fully dedicated to the spin-off as CEO.