IRB Barcelona, along with another 30 Catalan companies and organisations, is participating in the four-day convention in San Diego.
The BIO International Convention (BIO) is the top partnering fair for the biomedical sector.
The Institute’s spin-offs Iproteos and Nostrum Biodiscovery are also visiting the fair.
Today sees the start of the BIO International Convention (BIO), a top partnering fair for the biomedical sector in which IRB Barcelona’s Innovation Department is participating for the eighth consecutive year. During the four-day event, the San Diego Convention Center (California, United States) will host 18,500 industry leaders and executives from more than 4,000 companies and international institutions from 76 countries, including 30 companies and organisations from Catalonia. The 46-strong Catalan delegation is coordinated by Biocat and has its own space.
“BIO Convention has enormous potential, it is a great opportunity to reach many companies outside Europe, where we hope to find new collaborations by presenting the IRB’s technology and capacities,” explains Tiago Botelho, Industrial Liaison Officer at the Institute responsible for strengthening ties with industry attending the convention. He adds, “The fair is also the perfect place to catch up on the latest trends in the sector and consolidate existing bonds, both in the public and private sectors.”
Iproteos, which focuses on R&D of new therapeutic strategies based on peptidic protease inhibition, is attending the event this year. According to Iproteos CEO Teresa Tarragó, who summarises up the spin-off’s goals to Biocat, the company is attending the event in order “to promote our technology platform among pharmaceutical corporations in the sector and forge contacts with investors and companies interested in our project to treat the cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia”.
Nostrum Biodiscovery, devoted to the computational biology sector, is visiting the fair for the first time. “Our main goals at BIO this year will be to boost the company’s international expansion and scout for investors to strengthen the drug-design projects we are working on,” explains CEO Josep Oriol Nicolás to Biocat.
The BIO International Convention is the largest global event for the biotechnology industry and it attracts the biggest names in biotech, offers key networking and partnering opportunities, and provides insights and inspiration on the major trends affecting the industry.
This year, the fair will offer over 1,500 education sessions with featured speakers like David Cameron, former prime minister of the United Kingdom, and Kathleen Rubins, the first astronaut to sequence DNA in space.
Gonzalo Fernández-Miranda, associate researcher at IRB Barcelona, leads this therapeutic project selected by CaixaImpulse to facilitate its development towards the market.
The newspaper “El Mundo” devotes an extensive report to Friedreich's Ataxia through the testimony of Marta, a 13-year-old girl, who began to show the first symptoms of this rare disease when she was only five years old.
The report highlights the research performed by IRB Barcelona aimed to develop an injectable frataxin treatment that can reach the brain. Frataxin is the protein that is reduced in those affected by this disease.
"Saber Vivir" magazine dedicates an article to a study—co-led by Cristina Fillat, head of the Gene Therapy and Cancer Group at IDIBAPS, and Raúl Méndez, ICREA researcher at IRB Barcelona—on an innovative approach to provide an adenovirus with high specificity against tumour cells.
The article includes Raúl Méndez's comments about the effectiveness of this new strategy to achieve genetically modified viruses that infect only tumor cells, thus preserving healthy tissues: "It would be effective in a large number of tumours".
