Polygene

Polygene was founded in 2002. It si among the top 10 professional service providers in the world, currently employing staff of 10. The annual turnover of Polygene is 1million euros. Core experitise of the company is the generation of genetcally modified animals (mice, rats and rabbits), icluding project stategising, gene isolation, vector cloning of expression and gene targeting vectors, embryonic stem cell work, pronucelar and blastocyst injection for generation of knock-in and knock-out mice and transgenic mice, mouse maintenance and mouse backcrossing.

Polygene roles in SYBIL

PG is a work package leader for WP3, the generation of genetically modified mouse models (transgenic and knock-in/knock-out). Several inducible systems were provided by PG for in vivo evaluation studies by consortium partners.

PG facilities include fully equipped state-of-the-art molecular biology and cell biology laboratories, injection unit and mouse facility, fully equipped with IVCs.

Polygene researchers involved in SYBIL

Dr Doron Shmerling (CEO) – Doron has a background as a neuroscientist, and as a geneticist working on homologous recombination in bacteria even before homologous recombination was an issue in mammals (at least in the lab). He later developed innovative solutions to a variety of technical challenges, amongst them for functional genomics applications at Novartis. In 2002, Doron co-founded PolyGene AG for the targeting of transgenes into mice as a model technique to generate animal model in a reproducible fashion and on a large scale. Privately and professionally, he’ll do everything to find a beautiful solution for a complicated problem. And when he’s at home, amongst many things, he’s cooking for friends (a thing he views as not very far from what he does in the lab).

Dr Stefan Selbert – From his academic and commercial path, first as a post-doc at the University in Edinburgh (Scotland) and the Medical School in Lübeck (Germany) and later on as a project manager being responsible for R & D in the biotech industry, Stefan brings very far-reaching insight and hands-on experience in the field of ES-cell technology, in-vitro-differentiation, as well as in the generation and analysis of animal models of human disease. Stefan Selbert is married, has two teenage kids and loves endurance sports.