About Us
Founded 1994. Reimagined since 2011. Accessible to all since 2026.
Founded by Prof. Dr. Vincent Bergdorf in Tübingen
Dr. Sieglinde Klaus takes over as Managing Director
Online store launch
The Beginnings: One Lab, One Idea
It was 1994 when Vincent Bergdorf first synthesized his own peptide. Not in a corporate lab, not backed by venture capital, but in a converted garage in Tübingen, funded from his postdoc savings.
Bergdorf, freshly habilitated at Eberhard Karls University, had previously spent six years at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried. Working under Dieter Oesterhelt on membrane proteins, he made an observation he could not let go of: certain short-chain peptides showed in vitro activity profiles far beyond what the literature of the time would have predicted. Work such as Boman's landmark review (Annual Review of Immunology, 1995) and Kastin's Handbook of Biologically Active Peptides (Academic Press, 2006) would only systematically contextualize these findings years later.
His supervisors dismissed it. Too speculative, they said. No funding body would support it.
Bergdorf funded it himself.
The founding of Bergdorf Bioscience was not a strategic move. It was stubbornness. The stubbornness of a scientist who knew he had found something and was not willing to let it disappear in a drawer.
The early years were tough. Bergdorf taught at the university during the day and worked in the lab at night. Orders came sporadically, mostly from small research groups who had heard about his work through word of mouth. What set him apart: a rigor in purity analytics that was unmatched in the industry. Where others considered 95% purity sufficient, Bergdorf accepted nothing below 98%.
Turning Point: 2011
Seventeen years is a long time. When Vincent Bergdorf stepped down as managing director in 2011, the one-man operation had become a small but respected company, with clients ranging from university research groups to mid-size pharmaceutical service providers.
The transition to Sieglinde Klaus did not come out of nowhere. Klaus, with a doctorate in pharmacy from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, had spent over a decade working with leading peptide manufacturers, heading the quality assurance department for custom syntheses, building exactly the network and expertise that Bergdorf Bioscience needed.
Where Vincent Bergdorf was a researcher who ran a company on the side, Sieglinde Klaus was an entrepreneur who understood the science.
She recognized early on that the future of peptide manufacturing did not lie exclusively in European laboratories. Regulatory hurdles, cost pressures, and a shortage of skilled workers all made purely European production increasingly difficult.
Klaus began systematically evaluating production partners in East Asia. It took years. Sample shipments that were discarded. On-site audits where expectations and reality diverged. Manufacturers with whom collaboration had to be terminated after a promising start.
Dr. Sieglinde Klaus
Managing Director since 2011
The Next Generation
The breakthrough came through a combination of persistence and a fresh perspective. Sieglinde Klaus's son, who grew up between HPLC chromatograms and kitchen table conversations about peptide sequences, brought something that could not be learned in any lab or lecture hall: the ability to approach operational problems differently.
Together, they developed a qualification protocol that went far beyond industry minimum standards. Every batch is independently tested. Every certificate of analysis is verified, not simply accepted. The supply chain is built so that traceability is not a buzzword but lived practice.
After over a decade of evaluation, negotiations, and building stable production relationships, 2026 was finally the year: Bergdorf Bioscience launched its own online store. Not a rush job, not a minimum viable product. But the result of thirty years of experience in peptide research and manufacturing, distilled into an offering that follows a single principle: the highest quality. Without compromise.