One to Watch: Lidia Nachbaur, managing director of Qventis

An office, a lab and EUR 50,000 – that’s all Lidia Nachbaur needed to start Qventis, a medical devices firm in Hennigsdorf, a small town in the state of Brandenburg, outside Berlin. It was here in 2016 that Nachbaur, a chemist from Portugal with 18 years’ experience in the medical devices industry, took a chance and founded her start-up. “When you take a decision, you just jump in – you’re not aware of all the burdens and barriers you will face,” she says. “I wanted to develop innovative products for regenerative medicine, and only people with passion do this.”

Regenerative medicine entails a paradigm shift in medical treatment: Instead of treating symptoms, it is about stimulating the regenerative potential of the human body. Nachbaur’s work is guided by what she calls the “four R’s”: rejuvenating, repairing, replacing and restoring. “Our strategy is to develop products that are based on the body’s own building blocks.” The applications are wide-ranging: from smoothing wrinkles to restoring joint fluids and healing wounds faster. Qventis’ top brand is RENÉE, a product line based on hyaluronic acid gels for facial rejuvenation, but the company has a number of patents in progress.

Nachbaur chose Germany because it has the best infrastructure for supporting new companies. “In the biotech and medtech sector in Europe, Germany is just No. 1.”