NeuroProof was established in 2007 as a spinoff of the University of Rostock’s animal physiology department in northern Germany. Its founders, Alexandra Gramowski and Olaf Schröder, have won international recognition for research that may lead to the development of new pain-relief drugs.

Securing research funding is vital to the 12-employee company, which analyses compounds that may later be used as ingredients in pharmaceuticals or cosmetics, by testing their effects on the central nervous system.
It recently embarked on cutting-edge EU-funded research thanks to the Enterprise Europe Network, whose 3 000 experts in 50 countries help SMEs find the right programme and put together a winning proposal.

NeuroProof is one of the world’s few companies that cultivates nerve cells on so-called neuro-chips, which record the activity of individual cells and which can be interpreted afterwards.

For the analysis, NeuroProof uses foetal mice nerve tissue that can be kept alive and monitored for weeks, potentially allowing drug companies to bring better products to market.

Once NeuroProof developed the technique, it had to prove that it worked in practice – which meant finding research funding and partners from the fields of biochemistry and toxicology.

Hard-pressed to do so alone, NeuroProof turned to the Enterprise Europe Network, based in Steinbeis Team North-East, a research management group that works closely with the University of Rostock.

“We support companies and scientists in everything related to their research, from the preparation to running projects and marketing and technology transfer,” says Frank Graage, head of the Steinbeis Team.

Guided by the Network, NeuroProof secured €1.3 million in EU funding via four separate projects, and found 37 new partners around the world – these projects will allow NeuroProof to profile about 100 new compounds.“The Network’s support made the whole process more manageable,” says NeuroProof founder and CEO Olaf Schröder.