Polyneuron awarded at The Brain Forum 2016

Jamil El-Imad, CEO of The Brain Forum, is pleased with the outcome: “It has been a really fantastic two days. The Brain Forum has once again succeeded in uniting diverse stakeholders against one the biggest challenges of this era. The whole programme, delivered by scientists, engineers, clinicians, regulators, service providers, bankers and even actors, was outstanding.”

The Brain Forum was divided into two themed days with the first day dedicated to Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and the second day focused on Science. At the first day, The Brain Forum Innovation Award once again offered opportunities for early-stage startups to connect with leading experts in brain research, as well as with investors interested in the solutions of the future. The six start-ups, selected out of more than 120, making the final round each had five minutes to pitch their projects to the audience and a jury representing venture capital, science and entrepreneurship.

PolyNeuron won the Jury Award: the jury was impressed by this new class of immunomodulatory drug by virtue of its proprietary Antibody-Catch technology platform. Platform-derived compounds selectively eliminate disease-causing autoantibodies in autoimmune disorders. According to Ruben Herrendorff, Co-Founder of the Swiss startup, clinical trials will start in 2018.

MassChallenge awarded Pragma Therapeutics, a France based company developing new drugs designed to fight post-traumatic stress disorder, hearing loss and tinnitus by treating their cause directly. Pragma will take part in the Swiss programme of MassChallenge. The Audience Award went to the French start-up Rhythm.

The Entrepreneurship and Innovation Day began with the Keynote lecture “Practical lessons in machine learning”. During this session, Greg Corrado, a Senior Research Scientist at Google Research, gave an overview of Google’s current research in machine intelligence that explores virtually all aspects of machine learning, including deep learning and more classical algorithms.

During the Science Day, The Brain Forum welcomed back the most important global brain initiatives. The session “International Brain Initiatives: Progress, challenges and opportunities” gave an overview of the world’s major brain projects, providing updates about their scope, aims and progress.

(SK)