… this is who we are.
An Interview by N. Minimax with Sabine and Joerg
Hello Sabine and Joerg, how did come up the idea to found a company?
After returning from the US, where we had worked in virus research at the National Institutes of Health, we founded our research group in a German research organization in 2006. We had acquired funding by the EU, foundations, and others. These grants we had acquired by our own, which gave us a lot of freedom for our research. In 2010 we were in the middle of difficult negotiations for a big research grant of which we were not sure if we were to receive it. At the same time, we had requests for consultation of biotech companies. We could not offer consulting through the research organization, thus we founded sajo as consulting company. This also gave us an additional option, should the grant negotiations fail. One year later, the negotiations were successfully closed and we stayed for further four years in the research organization.
The never-ending fight against impediments led us to thinking about alternative options to successfully reach our scientific goals.
In that period, the plan matured to set up sajo as a research enterprise. We know the US basic research, as well as applied research, we had successfully negotiated and acquired research grants and awards. All this experience, our ideas and know how are now driving the sajo operative business.
What do you envision for sajo?
Our goals are to identify BROADLY ACTING ANTIVIRAL FACTORS WITH STRONG ACTIVITY and to make them available for medical treatment against diverse viral families. To that end, we are using an array of techniques that we have developed and brought to perfection over the last years, making this our unique selling points.
This will not be a short-term endeavor, the developmental timeline may take up to eight or ten years.
Currently, we are looking globally for adequate, strong partners, who do not go for short-term profit, but rather think and plan in the long term.
What was your motivation to start a blog?
In January we realized that the then unnamed virus spreading from Wuhan would pose a bigger problem should the measures for containment fail. At the same time, the public in Europe was assuaged. This prompted us to start a blog providing information.
In the middle of February, programming of the blog was finished by our IT expert (thanks to our IT!) and is being written by us on a regular basis.
Topics are chosen depending on the current situation and our readers’ need for information. We also include questions we are being asked.
We are writing the blog entries as independent virologists and scientists, the blog’s costs are covered by us privately. In this blog we are sharing our expertise, including the knowledge of the specific literature, our experience, and our evaluation of the current situation.
Some of the blog entries are explaining the sajo business to give you an impression of the company.
The topic of infectious diseases will be an ongoing one and will keep us busy for the future, it is a challenge and it is offering us an exciting purpose of life.
Thanks a lot for the interview. I’m looking forward to your upcoming blog posts.
Interview by N. Minimax, April 2020, translation by N. Minimax jr.
Blog post “how to use a face masks correctly”:
https://www.sajo-innovation.de/blog/face-masks-for-all-hotly-debated/
Meet Dr. Sabine Breun at XING: