A pocket knife for the laboratory | Sächsische.de

So far, these techniques have provided all kinds of equipment in the laboratory. The Fluidlab combines them: microscopy, sensors, spectrometers – all of this is integrated in the handy device. “We have profited a lot from the smartphone development, which has produced powerful micro-optics or a lot of computing power in a small space,” says company founder Stefan Fraedrich.

It was he who came up with the idea for the device – in a hospital in Ghana. The founder, originally from Schmiedeberg / Dippoldiswalde, did an internship there during his training as a paramedic. And seen how poor access for many people is to laboratory medicine, to the analysis of blood and urine. Everything is sent to central laboratories, but that is expensive and time-consuming.

“I wanted to change that,” he says. After his return he studied electrical engineering at the TU Dresden. “I spent most of the time not in lectures, but in laboratories.” There he developed the Fluidlab with two fellow students. To bring it to market, they founded Anvajo in 2016. The name is made up of the first names of the founders’ three little sisters: Anne, Vanessa, Josephine. Today the “pocket knife for laboratory use”, as they call it at Anvajo, has users all over the world, from Dresden to Taipei.

Above all, they are scientists who work, for example, in research on cancer or heart attacks. At the TU Dresden, for example, the pharmacologist Dr. Erik Klapproth, which processes take place after a heart attack and how heart muscle cells behave. The Fluidlab is also used in veterinary medicine to examine animal urine for urinary tract diseases and kidney insufficiency – directly in the practice. 700 veterinary practices are currently using the Fluidlab.

Better a tablet than dialysis

Anvajo also wants to use this so-called point-of-care solution in human medicine. The focus is on the one hand on the development of a blood test to analyze the iron values, on the other hand on kidney screening: Doctors should be able to examine the kidney values ​​in the urine and blood directly in the practice – and thus detect kidney failure in good time. “This not only saves costs for the health system,” says Fraedrich.

“It is also better for the patient to take a tablet every day than to have to go on dialysis for the rest of his life.” If you know in time that you have a diseased kidney, you can also change your lifestyle. After all, kidney failure is a typical comorbidity of diabetes, high blood pressure or obesity.

Anvajo is currently working on approval and economic optimization so that the analyzer is also financially worthwhile for doctors. It should be ready in 2023. “We are getting a lot of support from associations and medical professionals from abroad, for example from Australia and the USA,” says Fraedrich. In Germany, the skepticism is even greater, innovations in the health system more difficult. Fraedrich, however, is optimistic that he will also be able to convince local medical representatives.

Corona was a “brake”

With his entry into human medicine, he also associates a boost for his company, which is still financed with venture capital. “In a few years we will be profitable,” believes Fraedrich. At the beginning of 2020, the company moved into its new headquarters on Zwickauer Straße in Dresden. Almost everything is united there – development, production, customer service. Most of the 65 employees from twelve countries work in Dresden, some also at the Berlin location or in the field.

The move was just done – then Corona came. “That was a brake,” says Fraedrich. “We had massive sales losses, and many potential customers were difficult to reach for our sales force due to the contact restrictions.” But now, he says, things are clearly on the up again. “We remain the enfant terrible in diagnostics.”

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