Accure Therapeutics, a privatetranslational neuroscience R&D company and a CataloniaBio & HealthTechmember, and Oculis, a globalophthalmology company developing life changing treatments to save sight andimprove eye care with breakthrough innovations, announced a licensing agreementgranting Oculis exclusive global rights to develop and commercialize ACT-01 apotentially disease modifying therapy to protect and prevent damage to theoptic nerve and retina.

GENOMCORE S.L., also known for its line of personalized health services under the MADE OF GENES brand, has received funding for the largest funded artificial  intelligence project to personalize the treatment of metastatic cancer. The project is funded by the European Union within the Next Generation EU program, which will cover approximately 7.5 million euros of the consortium's overall budget (10,692,931 euros), of which GENOMCORE will receive 919,610.22 euros  from the funds which accounts for 80% of the total budget.

Inveready has acquired the majority of one of the leading value fund managers in Spain, True Value Investments, SGIIC, S.A. With this operation, Inveready enters the market of mutual funds with the help of a team recognized in the sector. The financial group has reached a binding agreement and is only subject to the mandatory authorization by CNMV, for the acquisition of the capital of True Value Investments, which manages more than € 300 million.

The startup specializing in digital health solutions, and a CataloniaBio & HealthTech  member, has closed a € 1.3 million round led by the Swiss Board Advisors AG and Viopas Venture Consulting GmbH, two European funds specializing in the healthcare sector. Both have joined the company as minority partners and the funds will be used by the company to consolidate in Spain and expand into Europe.

Asabys Partners, gestora de capital risc especialitzada en biomedicina, membre de CataloniaBio & HealthTech, eleva el seu primer fons fins els 117 milions d’euros. L’ampliació del vehicle Sabadell Asabys, amb el tancament situat a 87 milions, és degut a una inversió de 30 milions del Fons Europeu d’Inversions (FEI).

This morning, CataloniaBio  & HealthTech formally renewed its Board of Directors at the Generally Assembly of members, which was held today in the MGS auditorium in Barcelona. This replacement comes after the previous Board of Directors, led by per Jaume Amat (Specipig), completed its 4 year term as per the association’s charter.

Integra Therapeutics, a biotechnology company that is creating next-generation gene writing tools, announced today the appointment of Professor George Church to its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB).

The Institute of  Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) hosted the presentation of the Strategic Research Program in biotechnology applied to health, developed through the so-called Complementary Plans of the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism, and which will be executed until the end of 2024. It has a budget of 32 million euros and 5 autonomous communities will work together, co-financing the program.

CataloniaBio& HealthTech have launched the IVD Accelerator Programme, with the support of ACCIÓ (Generalitat de Catalunya), to boost projects from In VitroDiagnostics (IVD) companies, providing specialist assistance and training in key areas such as evaluation of technologies, related regulatory issues and market access strategies, among others.

SpliceBio, a biotechnology company exploiting protein splicing to develop next generation gene therapies and a CataloniaBio & HealthTech member, today announced the completion  of an oversubscribed €50 million series A financing. The financing was co-led by UCB Ventures and existing shareholder Ysios Capital and joined by new investors New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Gilde Healthcare, Novartis Venture Fund, and existing shareholder Asabys Partners. The Company was seeded in 2020 by Ysios Capital and Asabys Partners, both CataloniaBio & HealthTech members.

CataloniaBio& HealthTech is launching the eight edition of its Biosuccess Award, an initiative that will recognise the best business milestone of 2021 in the health and life sciences sector in Catalonia. The deadline for submitting candidacies is 28 February, using this form.

The winner will receive an honorific award that this year will be given, again, during the CataloniaBio & HealthTech Gala, the benchmark annual event for the biomedicine and health sector in Catalonia, bringing together over 200 entrepreneurs, executives, researchers, politicians and public figures. The Gala, that had to be cancelled on 2020 due to the pandemic, is going ...

Wivi Visión, a company specializing in solutions that assess the capabilities of the visual system, has signed an agreement with the General Óptica group for its presence in its stores. The companies have signed a collaboration agreement in which they will begin the  development of their technology aimed at the assessment and treatment of visual  dysfunctions in the chain's establishments. During the first phase of the Wivi Visión project, it will be set up in an initial group of four stores in Madrid, Barcelona, Vigo and Jerez de la Frontera.

The Wivi Vision system performs a visual cognitive assessment to ...

The venture capital manager Inveready, a CataloniaBio & HealthTech member, has led a € 3 million round for Atlas Molecular Pharma (Atlas). It has been completed together with the public entities CDTI and EZTEN, and the participation of the company’s current partners.

With this investment, Atlas, created with the aim of developing new pharmacological chaperones for the treatment of rare metabolic diseases, will begin a Phase I study and a Phase II clinical trial to evaluate the drug's effectiveness in patients with PEC, which will be conducted in the United States. Completion of studies should allow access to the FDA's ...

Sequentia, a CataloniaBio & HealthTech member, has received an EIC grant from the European Commission, part of the EIC Accelerator program, that supports SMEs to scale up high impact innovations with the potential to create new markets or disrupt existing ones. In addition to financial support, all projects benefit from a range of Business Acceleration Services that provide access to leading expertise, corporates, investors and ecosystem actors.

Sequentia was one of the 99 companies that were selected to benefit from the programme and will be able to take MICK to the next level. MICK is the first translational microbiome ...

Ferrer, the international pharmaceutical laboratory based in Barcelona, and a CataloniaBio & HealthTechmember, has exceeded global B Corp standards in terms of social and environment performance, transparency and corporate responsibility in all the territories in which it has a direct presence. With the completion of the certification process, Ferrer is the first Spanish pharmaceutical company to become part of the international B Corp community, the group of companies that aim to build a more inclusive and sustainable economy. 

Mario Rovirosa, CEO of Ferrer, expressed hissatisfaction with joining B Corp and explained that “being a B Corp company isthe culmination ...

Read the BioRegion of Catalonia Report.

Watch the videos of the presentation.

Investment in health startups in the BioRegion continues to grow and again surpassed the €200 million mark for the second year in a row, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. In total, companies raised €238 million, the most to date. Venture capital funding was the main driver of this growth, with more than €187 million, or 79% of all capital, three times as much as in 2019.

83% of the venture capital raised was in operations with international investors. In fact, more than 90% of operations worth over €10 million are ...

The journal Frontiers Computational Psychiatry has  published a methods article based on the performance of a clinical in silico test (ISCT) for a head-to-head comparison between Lisdexamfetamine and Methylphenidate, two compounds used to treat patients with ADHD. It is a collaborative project between the Catalan company Anaxomics  Biotech, Takeda, the Hospital  Perpetuo Socorro in Badajoz, the Hospital Infanta  Leonor in Madrid, the Institute of Biotechnology and Biomedicine (IBB, of the UAB), the GRIB (from UPF) and the ICREA institution.

Anaxomics' TPMS (Therapeutic  Performance Mapping System) technology has made it possible to simulate and model via Quantitative Pharmacology of Systems (QSP ...

The global  biopharmaceutical company Almirall, a CataloniaBio & HealthTech  member, focused on skin health, and the Institute for Research in  Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), announced today a  research collaboration to identify new oral treatments for immune-inflammatory  skin diseases with remaining high unmet medical needs using molecular glue  degraders, a novel therapeutic modality. These monovalent degraders offer a new  avenue to induce the degradation of potentially disease-causing proteins that  cannot be targeted with conventional therapeutic agents.

The collaboration brings together Almirall’s scientific, dermatological, and data analysis knowledge with the expertise of the IRB Barcelona’s Targeted  Protein Degradation and Drug Discovery lab, led ...

Peptomyc, the spin-off of the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) and ICREA, and a member of CataloniaBio & HealthTech, has secured 8.6 million euros in funding from its current partners through a convertible loan. The next step is to open a round of funding of 25 million euros, with the aim of carrying out phase II of the clinical trial.

For the first 8.6 million, the biotechnology company has had the support of Alta Life Science, HealthEquity, Aurora Biosciences and various business angels, in addition to the CDTI, from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.

The ...

Aortyx, a CataloniaBio & HealthTech member, has received a grant of 2.5 million euros from the European Commission, part of the EIC Accelerator program, that supports SMEs to scale up high impact innovations with the potential to create new markets or disrupt existing ones.

The funds will be dedicated to advancing the preclinical phase of the first product of Aortyx, the preclinical studies and the necessary regulatory stages to initiate the clinical trials and develop the market access strategy. The company has developed a patch for the treatment of aortic dissections that adhere to the damaged artery and plug ...