The Ulm-based start-up company, varionostic GmbH, has received a research grant from the German Ministry of Economics and Technology. Details on the level of the grant were not disclosed. Together with the Institutes of Pathology and Legal Medicine at the University Hospital of Ulm, the company will research tumour markers and develop detection systems for DNA methylations. The project is funded as part of the PRO INNOII programme.

There are numerous service providers that investigate long sequences consisting of hundreds of bases. The start-up company varionostic GmbH from Ulm has chosen a different path – the company focuses on short sequences and the very smallest changes in the genome. The founder of the company, Uwe Gerstenmaier, is convinced that university researchers and small research-based biotech companies depend on such exact analyses once they have identified the needle in the genetic haystack.