Swiss Biotech Day: meeting place for the industry

The new Swiss Biotech Report 2013 which was presented for the first time at the Swiss Biotech Day gives a good overview of the industry. Biotech is a very dynamic industry and as a result new projects, start-ups and support organisations are constantly coming up. At the event participants got background information about several recently founded companies and organisations.

One of the new organisations is the National Thematic Network Swiss Biotech. Those networks are key elements of the new strategy of the Commission for Technology and Innovation CTI to promote knowledge and technology transfer. The networks help to form contacts between businesses and public research institutes. Following a multi-stage assessment procedure in 2012 eight networks were recognised by the CTI. They began their work in January 2013.

At the Swiss Biotech Day three speakers presented the “National Thematic Network Swiss Biotech”. Daniel Gygax gave a short introduction. The network is backed by two organisations with much experience: biotechnet and Swiss Biotech Association. Through its innovation board the network collaborates with a lot of organisations from across Switzerland such as Agire, Bioalps, Platinn, Scienceindustries, Unitec, Unitectra and more.

The main goal of the network is to increase the competitiveness by interactive added value. Swiss Biotech has two different business areas:

• Translational R&D: The network aims at supporting the development of new processes and products with the help of customised innovation projects and open innovation networks and with the streamlining of academic IP.
• Knowledge Management: The network aims at providing information and knowledge to cross-fertilize Translational R&D with the help of the Swiss Biotech Reference Platform, workshops and events and internationalisation.  

Interested start-ups can get more information from Domenico Alexakis: info@swissbiotech.org

One example of the work of Swiss Biotech is the Competence Centre for Tissue Engineering for Drug Development and Substance Testing (TEDD) which was presented by Ursula Graf. TEDD was co-founded by the start-up Insphero. TEDD pools and transfers knowledge and technologies in order to promote the further development and application of 3D cell and tissue culture. TEDD organises symposia, workshops, company visits and network projects to reach this goal.

In addition more than a dozen biotech companies – most of them start-ups – presented their technology and their business model. Especially interesting were the presentations of several spin-offs of Merck Serono, which are very young and not yet so well known. The three presenting spin-offs are active in several domains. Asceneuron is a classical drug development company. The core team of the company is comprised of the Alzheimer Group from Merck Serono. Quartz Bio is a bioinformatics company analysing biomarker data to support customers which are developing stratified therapies.

A little bit different is the third company: the Geneva Biotech Center (GBC). With its unique mode of partnerships, ensuring that discoveries made in public institutions advance into clinical development the Geneva Biotech Center addresses a recognized gap in drug discovery. GBC is a pre-pharmaceutical company operating in a public-private environment and providing R&D services for drug discovery and development. The company collaborates with universities, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and patient organizations. The service scope ranges from hit optimization to proof-of-concept. The fields of expertise include rare and orphan, neurology and auto-immune diseases.

Of course additional information about what’s going on in the Swiss biotech industry could be gathered during the breaks. But it will take some time before we can disclose what we have heard during our discussions.