Three years since its start and the bioinformatics company Intelligent Pharma sets up its first international subsidiary in the Technological Park of Heidelberg, in Germany, which will be inaugurated on 13 April. This scientific park is one of the most important biotechnological points of Germany and one of the pioneers in the entire world in life sciences. Linked to the Ruprecht-Karls University, it occupies a surface area of 50,000 square metres and has more than 80 enterprises.
According to the CEO of Intelligent Pharma, Dr. Ignasi Belda, "not only do we pose the opening of the subsidiary as a commercial platform for our services, but it will also serve us as an observatory to learn how it develops and what is being done in international settings”.
A large part of the European pharmaceutical industry is concentrated in Germany and Switzerland. Intelligent Pharma offers services in the area of biopharmaceutical research, such as the design of computer-assisted medicines, virtual screening, management of libraries of compounds and computational toxicology, among others, that permit increasing success and diminishing the research costs of new active compounds. These services are aimed at the pharmaceutical and biotechnological industries. “Our presence in Germany will improve the support and consulting that we offer our clients. And it also opens the doors for us to other countries such as Austria and Switzerland, markets with many multinational firms”, Belda recognises.
One person will work in the subsidiary of Germany, but it is planned to increase the team according to the company’s needs. This expansion coincides with the transfer of the central headquarters to a new office on the sixth floor of Tower I of the Barcelona Science Park (PCB), which has permitted it to gain space.
The case of Intelligent Pharma is exemplary as a model of entrepreneurship. It originated in the bioincubator of the PCB, it innovates with technology –its successful product Helios is a good sample- and it takes advantage of enterprise support programmes such as BioEmprenedorXXI, an award that it won in the 2008 edition in hand with entities such as “la Caixa”, Barcelona Activa, Biocat, the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce and Genoma España. It has also received other distinctions: the “Fem Empresa” of Caixa Tarragona, the Bancaixa Awards to Young Entrepreneurs and the BDigital for Digital Innovation.
In order to continue strengthening its international projection, the company will participate for the third consecutive year with Biocat, along with other Catalan enterprises, in the principal international convention of the sector: the BIO, which will take place from 3 to 6 May in Chicago (USA).