Nine hot start-ups, 400 visitors and Joe Jimenez

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17.04.2015

Swiss Biotech Day took place in Basel on Tuesday. It was a day with a record number of visitors, an interesting keynote by Joe Jimenez and pitches from selected start-ups to investors and potential partners.

Biotech is evolving into a mature industry – this is one of the results of the new Swiss Biotech Report and Swiss Biotech Day proved the truth of this statement. As an example, the keynote speech was given by none other than Novartis CEO Joe Jimenez. He explained why disruptive innovation is a necessity in the healthcare industry and mentioned two global trends that will lead to a dramatic change in healthcare: demographics and sharply increased spending. Innovations that lead to only minor improvements are not likely to be reimbursed in future by health insurers.

Biotech start-ups play an important role in the development of disruptive healthcare innovation and Jimenez was very optimistic about Switzerland’s prominence as a biotech hub: “I am very bullish on the Swiss biotech industry. I see it growing and I see more money flowing in.”

Jimenez mentioned numerous small Swiss biotech companies with which Novartis works or in which the Novartis Venture Fund has invested; for example, it has ongoing collaborations with ESBATech, GeneGuide, Polyphor and Santhera, and the fund has stakes in companies such as Anokion, MyoPowers, Symetis, Covagen and Okairos.

Jimenez was also very positive about the financing situation for biotech companies. He said that the shake-up in the venture capital industry five to 10 years ago was justified, and in his view VCs now have a better understanding of the biotech industry and more money is available. One of the reasons is that the price of promising molecules in the preclinical development phase has increased sharply in recent years; thus, biotech start-ups can acquire attractive partnerships with large pharmaceutical companies or achieve lucrative exits, giving investors attractive returns.

In the afternoon, nine selected companies pitched to investors and potential partners:

Creoptix: its WAVE system ushers in a new era in label-free analysis of molecular interactions. Its best-in-class sensitivity and resolution opens up new possibilities in the study of molecular interactions, and paves the road for high quality data in standard applications.

Inflamalps: aims to establish itself as a key player in the treatment of chronic inflammation with the development of novel drugs to treat ophthalmological and dermatological diseases.

Asceneuron: develops effective therapeutics for orphan tauopathies, such as progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and Alzheimer’s disease. The first candidate molecule for progressive supranuclear palsy should enter Phase 1 clinical trials next year.

Avicenna Oncology: this very young company based in the Basel Inkubator focuses on cytotoxic payloads for antibody drug conjugates.

Sompharmaceuticals: focuses on the development of novel anti-tumour peptide medicines and diagnostics for patients with rare diseases, including growth hormone producing pituitary brain tumours (acromegaly) and malignant neuroendocrine hormone producing intestinal and pancreatic tumours (NETs).

Turing Pharmaceuticals: headquartered in Zug and with an office in New York, Turing is a spin-off of US biotech company Retrophin and focuses on treating unmet medical needs across broad therapeutic areas.

Amal Therapeutics: uses its proprietary cell-penetrating peptide platform to develop and progress therapeutic vaccines in oncology.

EffRx: originally founded in the US with a move to Switzerland seven years ago, EffRx develops novel therapeutic entities based on known/approved molecules with a specific focus on paediatric orphan diseases.

ArisGen: provides drug delivery solutions; its proprietary formulation technology enables delivery of therapeutic peptides, which today have to be injected, via oral or buccal/sub-lingual routes.

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