Biocat runs Health & Bio Team Dating event with BStartup of Banc Sabadell and CataloniaBio & HealthTech. This meeting brings together scientists and research groups working in the life sciences field with business people in order to create groups that can generate new business synergies and start-ups.
The previous editions hosted more than 530 meetings with over 250 projects and business professionals, 35 CEO, 16 final projects and more than 80 meetings. 85% of participants have found strategic contacts and new business thanks to the initiative and some teams have succeeded in reaching several agreements.
The idea for the 'Health & Bio Team Dating' event came about in 2015 as a result of the fact that: Catalonia has a strong network of scientists, entrepreneurs, investors and institutions, but there is a lack of collaboration between the different groups. This means that there are a number of scientific projects that could reach the market via newly-created start-ups, but they need someone to take charge of the business plan and fundraising. On the other hand, there are many experts in business management with an entrepreneurial spirit who are looking for new projects in the fields of healthcare and life sciences, but they do not know where to find them.
The need to combine excellent scientific research with business development expertise resulted in these meetings, in which the researchers present their search to professionals with business experience interested in growing these projects as mentors, entrepreneurs, or business developers. This year they reach the fifth edition and want to stimulate and promote technology transfer and knowledge, as well as develop the Catalan bio-entrepreneur ecosystem.
Through 30-minute speed dating meetings, Health & Bio Team Dating brings together scientists and executives who can create new business synergies and set up teams to create and run successful companies in:
One of the success stories to come out of Health & Bio Team Dating is that of Ruth M. Risueño, Founder and CSO (Chief Scientific Officer) of Leukos Biotech (a spin-off of the Josep Carreras Leukemia Research Institute), and Dr. Enrique Llaudet, who became CEO after their meeting at the event in 2015. The company is finishing preclinical development of a new class of drugs to treat acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and has announced a €3.5 million round of investment.
> Read more about Leukos Biotech here
Another team emerged from the previous edition is made up of by Dr. Valentini Konstantinidou and Chenghan Yang. As a result of their meeting at Health & Bio Team Dating, these two signed an agreement through which IESE MBA students can collaborate with Konstantinidou’s start-up: DNANutricoach.
> Read more about DNANutricoach here
Mariano Vázquez: "At Health & Bio Team Dating, I found seed capital and a mentor"
Another success story is Elem Biotech, a spin-off of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) that does virtual simulations of organs and tissue for drug research. Researcher Mariano Vázquez, co-founder of Elem Biotech, attended Health & Bio Team Dating event. There he had a meeting with Genesis Biomed and met Josep Lluís Falcó, who has joined Elem Biotech as a mentor and investor.
> Read more about Elem Biotech here
Ignasi Belda: "If I hadn’t gone to Health & Bio Team Dating, I would probably be doing something else right now"
Another success story is MiWEndo Solutions, a spinoff of the UPF in collaboration with the UPC, Hospital Clinic and ICREA that is developing a project to apply microwave technology to endoscopy to better identify malignant polyps, the precursor of colorectal cancer. The co-founders Ignasi Belda and Marta Guardiola, CEO and CTO, respectively, who were introduced at the 2018 Health & Bio Team Dating event.
> Read more about MiWEndo here
