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Bucher Porträts
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Dr. Peter Bendzko
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Invitek Gesellschaft für Biotechnik & Biodesign mbH
„Depending on creativity“
Life has not always been simple and straightforward for Peter Bendzko. The founder of a biotechnology company almost became a manufacturer of radioastronomy equipment. According to the 51-year-old, „This study option was offered to me in 1970 in the Soviet Union, although I had applied for biophysics.“ The Russian bureaucrats simply wanted to fulfill their quota. However, Bendzko has always been drawn tliving things. Ideally, he would like to have studied medicine „but I couldn’t stand the sight of blood.“
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Finally he accepted a place to study physics in Yerevan, although his enthusiasm was far from overwhelming. Where was Yerevan actually? It so happened that a chair in molecular biophysics had been established there opening up a brand new scientific field. So this is how Bendzko achieved his wish of becoming a biophysicist. When he returned to the GDR he was trained in one of the most modern research fields in the country. However, this was not enough to get him a contract of employment at the Humboldt University. „To get one of those you had to be in the SED (United Socialist Party of Germany)“, Bendzko recalls. So, in 1976, he went to the Academy of Sciences, going to Buch to work in the Central Institute of Molecular Biology. There he carried out a number of successful research projects including one on the early diagnosis of myocardial infarction. „At that time we had already developed a marker for early diagnosis and, looking at it in today’s terms, this should have been patented“, comments the businessman with some regret.
Time and time again he ran into problems with his superiors. During a research visit to the Soviet Union he clashed with the Soviet secret service because his girlfriend at that time visited him unannounced in a highly secret academic settlement. This resulted in disciplinary procedures and a three-year ban on traveling abroad. From then on he was not so highly rated and was „sidelined“ – into the strategic planning group of the prime minister. The work of the group involved using scientific and technical developments to produce conclusions about the national economy for the next 20 to 30 years. For obvious reasons the results are no longer very important but:„This taught me how to work in an interdisciplinary manner“, claims Bendzko „and I am still benefiting from this today.“
With the reunification in 1989, Peter Bendzko saw this, above all, as a chance to put some of his own ideas into practice. Of course, he was not short of these after his period as a researcher. In 1992 he established Invitek GmbH, one of the first commercial enterprises in Buch. He had no money. „Everything depended on the creativity of our staff.“ Unlike the banks, „who always wanted security“. And so the company has grown entirely due to its own efforts. Today, Invitek employs 27 staff and owns two dozen patents worldwide. The most important filed in the company is the product group for the acquisition, purification and analysis of the hereditary material DNA. The products are mainly used in forensic medicine and molecular diagnostics. Especially when things are tricky and fiddling, for example, because forensic medical samples contain only very small traces of DNA or are heavily contaminated. This is when the surperiority of the Invitek technology comes into its own compared with earlier technology which is now twenty years old. Because of this the company has good relationships with forensic medicine laboratories around the world, from the FBI to Scotland Yard.
Peter Bendzko is not short of new ideas. In the last 12 years Bendzko has founded several companies. He wants to get into treatment development in the future. He sees opportunities in the field of nanomedicine. There is plenty of evidence that nanoparticles only a millionth of a millimeter in size can produce significant therapeutic effects in the body. He has founded a new company to carry out this research and development. As far as Peter Bendzko is concerned we are entering a new era involving treatment agents with biophysical mechanisms of action. This is why he, as a biophysicist, wants to play an active part.
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At this site you will find portraits of Buch's citizens and institutions that we think you will be interested in. New ones will be dispalyed each month.
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