Sagetis Biotech, a member of CataloniaBio, has received the Advanced Therapy Medicinal Product (ATMP) designation from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for its novel polymer-coated adenovirus SAG 101 for the treatment of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Sagetis Biotech is a pioneer in the development of innovative coated virotherapies for treatment of cancer.

The committee for advanced therapies is the EMA responsible for assessing the quality, safety and efficacy of ATMP products and this entitiy is who granted SAG 101 to the company for meeting the established standards for gene therapy, that consists on the insertion of genetic elements as vectors ...

More than 200 social, economic, cultural, and academic entities joined forces yesterday, in a public ceremony at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Barcelona (UB), to give support to Barcelona’s candidacy to bring the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to the Catalan capital. The event was chaired by the Spanish Minister of Health, Dolors Montserrat; the Catalan Minister of Health, Antoni Comín, and the deputy mayor of the City Council of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni.

CataloniaBio, which represents more than 100 companies in the health and life sciences arena, has also signed the manifesto, along with Abertis, Barcelona Global, Banco ...

Devicare has signed an agreement with the company Inmave to market the family of Lit-Control® products in Colombia for the domiciliary control of frequent urological pathologies. Colombia is the second American country and the fourth globally, after Spain, Mexico and France, to distribute this first-in-class method.

The two companies have begun the regulation process with the Colombian National Institute for Medicine and Food Surveillance (INVIMA) with the support of ACCIÓ de Bogotá's office. Lit-Control® is expected to reach patients at the end of 2017.

"Colombia has renowned professionals, but lacks innovative medical technology,” explains Miquel González-Mut, International Business ...

Six out of ten donated organs fail during the transplantation process due to many factors, including the damage caused by poor preservation during the transport from the donor to the potential recipient. Transplant Biomedicals, a spin-off of IDIBAPS-Hospital Clinic from Barcelona devoted to disruptive innovation in this field, has sublicensed a new organ-preservation solution to a European company to overcome current limitations.

This is the most important international deal that Transplant Biomedicals has closed so far. The deal will represent an income of €6 million for the company. The next steps will be to develop the organ preservation solution and ...

Xenopat, a member of CataloniaBio, is one of the six entrepreneurship projects in the healthcare arena to be selected for the UnLtd Spain and Lilly Emprende inHealth programme. This means they will receive training, guidance, mentoring and the opportunity to participate in networking activities over eight months. It also comes with €5,000 in seed capital to help make the start-up a sustainable business.

Xenopat, headed up by Anna Portela, is addressing the need to design personalised oncology treatments. The company currently has model mice, Orthoxenograft®, which can be created for each patient in order to personalise their cancer treatment ...

Report from the last Lessons Learned session

Technology transfer (TT) should make an impact on society in the form of new medications, devices and technology to improve health. To make this happen, public research centers and industry must work together. The latest Lessons Learned session, held by the association of companies CataloniaBio and Biocat on 31 May at the Barcelona Science Park (PCB), featured four experts from the business arena, academia and venture capital sharing the lessons they’ve learned in recent years in Catalonia.

Felip Miralles, director of the eHealth Unit at Eurecat, kicked off the session by explaining ...

Mitelos, CataloniaBio member that develops, registers and manufactures medical devices and dietary supplements, and New Mark Medicine agree to market the therapeutic alternative for treating impacted ear wax Otiblock® in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The product is already sold in the Spanish market since September of 2016.

Otiblock® spray helps to remove impacted ear wax from the ear canal thanks to its formulation, which is oil-free and helps the ear to maintain the proper pH. In addition to its cerumenolytic action, the product benefits patients with associated risk factors that make them more prone to otitis externa ...

Pharmacelera, a company that offers both hardware and software solutions for computer-aided drug design, based in the Pier 01 building in Barcelona, has been selected by the Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI) as being in the top 5% of innovative companies in Spain in 2016.

Furthermore, the CDTI has awarded the company a NEOTEC grant to “accelerate the design of our solutions using molecular modelling algorithms, as well as hardware accelerators,” Pharmacelera CEO Enric Gibert explained to CataloniaBio. With this new development, the company will be able to search molecular libraries more quickly and precisely than ...

The Centre of Male Infertility and Analysis of Barcelona (CIMAB), a spin-off of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), has closed a distribution deal with American company DxNow for its Fertile™ and Fertile Plus™ products.

Given the rise in cases of male infertility, DxNow has searched for solutions to improve the results of assisted reproduction procedures by using techniques that sort sperm with the best mobility and morphology. This way, there is no need to use centrifugation methods, which can damage sperm, and there is a boost in assisted-conception success rates.

Fertile™ and Fertile Plus™ were presented this year at ...

The Catalan government celebrated the 25th anniversary of cluster policies in Catalonia on 8 June. The event, held at the Palau de la Generalitat, was led by President Carles Puigdemont and Catalan Minister for Economy and Knowledge Jordi Baiget. Before an audience of representatives from businesses, technology centres, universities and associations, Puigdemont highlighted, "Catalonia is a global benchmark in clusters" according to Harvard Business School and the World Bank and "addressing this through a public-private partnership is the right choice, thus boosting the country’s competitiveness.” ACCIÓ is the body in charge of cluster coordination.

Specipig and Bioemprèn ...

The second annual Trifermed awards, which recognise initiatives with social impact in the healthcare arena, have gone to Fundació de la Marató de TV3, Dr Mara Dierssen of the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), and Professor Ciril Rozman. The awards ceremony was held on 8 June at CaixaForum in Barcelona with more than 250 professionals from the sector in the audience. 

The panel of judges, chaired by Spherium Biomed CEO Luis Ruiz-Ávila, had nine members with long careers in the sector, including Reig Jofre CEO and CataloniaBio President Ignasi Biosca; Clara Campàs, head of Strategy and Development at Kern ...

Anapharm, a Contract Research Organisation (CRO) and CataloniaBio member that offers bioanalysis and scientific support services for the pharmaceutical industry, has doubled the size of its laboratory in Barcelona and presented its new corporate image as Anapharm Bioanalytics. All of this, as explains company founder and CEO Dr María Cruz, "is the result of improvements to our services and ongoing international growth in recent years."

Anapharm Bioanalytics has also added two more ABSciex 6500 LC-MS/MS/UPLC instruments to its laboratory and software updates. 

The name change does not affect the legal personality of the existing entity ...

STAT-Dx (STAT-Diagnostica & Innovation), a company that specialises in designing and marketing advanced point-of-care diagnostic systems and a CataloniaBio member, has just received a €20-million loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB) under the InnovFin programme. The company will put this capital towards co-funding a three-year project to develop a device to identify a wide range of infectious pathogens that cause diseases like meningitis or gastrointestinal and respiratory infections, among others. The company is based at the Barcelona Science Park.

STAT-Dx recently won the 2017 Biosucces of the Year Award, with Mosaic Biomedicals, which CataloniaBio grants to the best milestones ...

Biokit, a company in the Werfen Group that specialises in developing and manufacturing immunoassays and biomaterials and a member of CataloniaBio, has developed the first automatic reactive to diagnose heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT). The reactive, HemosIL HIT-Ab (PF4-H), has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and will soon hit the market in the United States. This is the first authorisation the US agency has granted for a product of these characteristics in the past ten years.

Heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT) is a condition that can occur in some patients when this anti-coagulant triggers a pre-thrombotic state and means treatment ...

The Financial Times has devoted a full article to Neuroelectrics as an example of an entrepreneurial start-up. Founded by Giulio Ruffini and Ana Maiques, who is currently on the CataloniaBio Board of Directors, Neuroelectrics has offices in Barcelona and Boston where it is developing neuron-stimulation devices to monitor and improve brain health. During the interview, Maiques admitted to having learned a lot from other types of entrepreneurs: “Hearing new opinions and points of view is the best way to find business ideas and management tools.”

The company has sold more than $3 million-worth of devices in over ...

Anaconda Biomed, a medical device company focused on the development of the next generation of neuro-thrombectomy systems for the treatment of Acute Ischemic Stroke (AIS) located in Barcelona, announces it has closed a series A financing of €15-million. The leading investors include Ysios Capital, Omega Funds, Banco Sabadell as well as current investor Innogest Capital.

Dr Ofir Arad, co-Founder and CEO of Anaconda Biomed, explains this financing "provide us the capital necessary to substantially progress the development of the ANCD Brain device, including the validation and verification process, clinical studies to support the initial commercialization in Europe, and an initial ...

Kern Pharma, a CataloniaBio member company, has acquired Spanish self-care pharmaceutical company Actafarma. This operation comes under the business diversification strategy for growth in Kern Pharma, which is based in Terrassa (Barcelona). “By acquiring Actafarma, we are strengthening our self-care line, as the company already has a wide range of consolidated products like Oxicol and others with great potential that have been recently launched to market,” explains CEO Raúl Díaz-Varela.

Laboratoris Actafarma was established in 1997 in Alcorcón (Madrid). In 2016, the company posted revenue of €10 million and it currently has a staff of 60 employees.  ...

Inveready, with 150 investors and a portfolio of 80 biotech and technology companies, is launching a €40-million fund, called Inveready Convertible Finance. Inveready will do so by issuing convertible bonds that can be exchanged for shares to invest in twenty newly created start-ups anywhere in the world. These start-ups must be traded on alternative markets, preferably the Spanish MAB or French Alternext.

"This fund will allow investors to make a controlled entry into a highly volatile market," explains Inveredy partner Carlos Conti. The company has already launched two debt funds and seeks to attract institutional investors, insurance companies and pension ...

InKemia IUCT Group will launch a new €10-million fund for start-ups and spin-offs in the health and life sciences. The fund, called Inkemia Fond-ICO Global, is endowed with a total of eight million euros: five from the Fond-ICO contest the company won recently and three from smaller investors.

Between the participating companies and spin-offs themselves, InKemia has 14 high-tech businesses in various sectors of the life sciences. Two of these emerging companies are based in the US and the UK, as one of the aims of this group traded on the Alternative Investment Market (MAB) is to continue growing through ...

Mind the Byte, a company focused on the computational drug discovery through its innovative platform SaaS (Software as a Service) and member of CataloniaBio, has opened a new financial round in the equity crowdfunding platform Crowdcube. With this round, the company expects to raise at least 450.000 euros with the aim to continue the expansion of its business development plan. Nowadays, Mind the Byte has offices at the Barcelona Science Park (PCB) and the Copenhagen Bioscience Park (COBIS).

In 2015 the company founded by Dr. Alfons Nonell-Canals closed its first round in Crowdcube for 235,490 euros. This investment ...