10 years of ZWT – tenants like BBMRI.at and Biobank Graz share their milestones

ZWT celebrated its 10th birthday this year and produced a video together with its tenants to mark the occasion. Among the tenants are many start-up companies from the life science field. BBMRI.at, the Austrian node of the European Biobanking Research Infrastructure BBMRI-ERIC, the European headquarters and Biobank Graz have been among the tenants from the very beginning. To date, 25 tenants with over 250 employees have found their place in the ZWT and ZWT ACCELERATOR.

In a video tenants had the opportunity to present one of their highlights they achieved during their last 10 years at the ZWT.

Cornelia Stumptner (BBMRI.at Executive Manager) emphasized that the circumstances offered by the ZWT have contributed to create a solid Austrian biobanking research infrastructure with BBMRI.at being an international pioneer in numerous biobank topics such as quality management and the development of CEN and ISO standards for sample pre-analytics, to name just a few examples.

Monika Valjan (Biobank Graz) reflected on the early days of Biobank Graz at the ZWT in 2014. At present, about 20 million human samples have found their place there.

Kurt Zatloukal (D&F Institute of Pathology at MedUni Graz) highlighted the relevance of the biobank as a data source. Medical data plays a key role for the development of a wide variety of products and technologies particularly in artificial intelligence (AI). At the ZWT, large digitization capacities of histological sections have been built up, leading to new applications in the field of AI in medical diagnostics.

Most common response from all tenants to the question what they appreciate most about the ZWT, was the proximity to the University hospital and the Medical University of Graz with its infrastructure and the possibility to network. This has created the best possible infrastructure for young and fast-growing companies.